School of Computing and Mathematics

I am currently Third Year Tutor in Mathematics, Schools and Colleges Liaison Officer and joint manager for The Keele and the Potteries Further Maths Centre.

My early academic career was spent oscillating between the Universities of Surrey and Essex. I gained a BSc in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Surrey in 1987, followed by an MA in Economics from the University of Essex in 1988. I returned to the University of Surrey and registered for a PhD in Pure Mathematics under the supervision of Donald Keedwell. In 1990 I took up a lectureship in the Mathematics Department at the University of Essex to on the newly formed MSc course in Operational Research and Statistics. I completed my PhD in 1991 and in October 1992 I came to Keele as a lecturer in pure mathematics following the retirement of Hans Liebeck. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2000. I was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications in 1999 and served as member of its council from 2000 to 2004.

Since 2005 I have been joint manager, alongside Dave Miller, of the Keele and the Potteries Further Maths Centre where I am responsible for teaching A-Level Further Maths to students from local schools and colleges. I also run a variety of maths events for school pupils including the Royal Institution Masterclasses for Year 8 pupils held on Saturday mornings in the Spring Term. These have been running since 1996 and now take place in Telford and Stafford as well as Keele.

My main area of research is in the application of algebraic structures, such as groups, quasigroups and neofields, to the construction of combinatorial designs in general and Latin squares in particular. Latin squares play a central role in many areas of combinatorics, and several interesting accounts exist on the web. Kathy Heinrich from Simon Fraser University has written an article on Partying with a Latin Square, a more extensive introduction to the subject may be found at cut-the-knot.

MAT-10039: Calculus I
MAT-20026: Linear Algebra
MAT-30001: Graph Theory
MAT-30013: Group Theory