PROFILE
Professor Michael Small
Modelling diseases and predicting the future through maths
I’ve spent more than 10 years working in research within the electronic and information engineering sectors. My focus is on understanding how structure, pattern and dynamics emerge from complex systems – particularly in engineering.Professor Michael Small
Professor Michael Small uses modern mathematics in medical research, searching for better ways to predict how patients will respond to cancer treatment. As one of Australia’s most published mathematicians, Professor Small is an expert in finding solutions to complicated medical problems.
He completed his bachelor’s degree in pure mathematics at the University, before undertaking a PhD in applied mathematics using nonlinear time series methods to quantify and describe children’s breathing patterns. During his PhD, Professor Small worked closely with Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, researching sudden infant death syndrome and measuring infant respiration while babies slept.
Following his PhD, Professor Small worked for a variety of global hedge funds and investment companies to develop financial market models. He went on to complete a postdoctorate research fellowship at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, where he researched cardiac dynamics on patients in the Coronary Care Unit at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Later he lived in Hong Kong during the SARS outbreak in 2003, where he used his mathematical expertise at Hong Kong Polytechnic University to work with the Hong Kong Health department to research ways to contain the disease.
Currently, Professor Small teaches the unit Dynamics and Control at UWA, and holds the CSIRO-UWA Chair in Complex Engineering Systems.
UWA Senior Research Award, 2016
Fellow of the Australian Mathematics Society, 2015
Editor of the journal Chaos, 2015 onwards
UWA Senior Research Award, 2014
Winner of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, 2011 (2012-2015)
New ARC training centre targets data as the future of asset maintenance
The Australian Research Council (ARC) has announced the start of a new Industrial Transformation Training Centre to help the resource sector better harness data for asset management.
Read moreNew research centre for resource sector
The Australian Research Council (ARC) has announced that it will partner with universities on a new Industrial Transformation Training Centre, using data science to transform asset maintenance for Australia’s resources sector.
Read morePhysics unlocks the secrets of roulette
Thinking like a physicist can improve your chances of winning at roulette, say researchers. A paper in a recent issue of the journal Chaos shows how a computer program can be used to give an expected return of at least 18 per cent, instead of the usual -2.7 per cent.
Read moreFunding
2017
ARC Discovery Projects
- 'Navigating tipping points in complex dynamical systems'
CSIRO, Research Plus postdoctoral fellowship
- ‘Enhancing tailings dewatering via optimal particle bridging activity from viscoelastic polymer solutions’
Resource Capital Funds
- ‘Agent based modelling to model the commodity markets’
Spanish Program of Excellent Research Groups
- ‘Applications of discrete and continuous dynamical systems’
2015
National Natural Sciences Foundation of China
- ‘Study on the interactions of coupled networks, epidemic spreading and information diffusion’
2014
University of Adelaide ex ARC Linkage Projects
- 'Control Points in Nitrogen Uptake - Enhancing the Response of Cereals to Nitrogen Supply and Demand'
National Natural Sciences Foundation of China
- ‘Climate time series analysis by means of complex network approaches’