Prof. Cheryl E Praeger a distinguished academic and researcher in the field of Graph Network Symmetry . Cheryl E Praeger is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, retiring in 2017 after 40 years service to UWA. She now focuses on research and research supervision in Group Theory and Combinatorics, in her role as Senior Honorary Research Fellow. In addition she is a member of the National Science and Technology Council (2022-2025).
In 2021 she was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia “for eminent service to mathematics, and to teriary eduction, as a leading academic and researcher, to international organisations, and as a champion of women in STEM careers”. She had previously been appointed a Member of the Order (AM) in 1999.(Graph)
Professor Praeger has won many distinguished awards, recognising her as one of Australia’s leading mathematicians. Many of her roles and awards marked a first for a woman: President of the Australian Mathematical Society (1992-1994), Lyle Medal of the Australian Academy of Science (2013, first awarded in 1935).
prof. Cheryl E Praeger earned her Bachelor of Science with Honors in Mathematics from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1970. Following that, in 1972, she pursued dual Master’s degrees, obtaining one from the University of Oxford, UK, and another from the University of Queensland, Australia. In 1973, she achieved her Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil) degree from the University of Oxford, UK. Later in 1989, she furthered her academic achievements by earning a Doctor of Science (D.Sc) from the University of Western Australia. With a rich educational background spanning (Graph) multiple prestigious institutions, she has demonstrated a commitment to scholarly pursuits and academic excellence throughout her career.
Awards
Professor Praeger was also the first pure mathematician, and the first Western Australian to receive the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science (2019); the first pure mathematician to win an ARC Federation Fellowship (2007-2012), or be named as WA Scientist of the Year (2009), or be inducted into the Western Australian Science Hall of Fame (2015). She is the inaugural recipient of the Ruby Payne-Scott Medal of the Australian Academy of Science (1921).
Over the span of 2009 to 2023, she has garnered a remarkable array of awards and distinctions, showcasing her outstanding contributions to the fields of science and mathematics. Notably, in 2023, she was honored as a Fellow of the International Science Council. In 2021, she received the prestigious Ruby Payne-Scott Medal from the Australian Academy of Science and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).(Graph)
Her global recognition includes being named a Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, UK, in 2020. Among her numerous accolades, she was awarded the (Australian) Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in 2019 and received an Honorary Doctorate from Primorska University in Slovenia in 2018. Her influence extends worldwide, with honors such as the Mehdi Behzad Prize from the Iranian Mathematical Society in 2015 and being named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. These distinctions underscore her exceptional impact on the scientific community and her commitment to advancing knowledge and education.
Professor Praeger’s research is on the theory of group actions and their applications in Algebraic Graph Theory and to Combinatorial Designs and other areas of Discrete Mathematics and Geometry; and algorithms for group computation including questions in statistical group theory and algorithmic complexity. Her mathematical work has been published in more than 400 journal articles and five monographs.
Her list of Publications can be found at https://cherylpraeger.github.io/research.html
A discussion website for her book ‘Permutation groups and cartesian decompositions’ with Csaba Schneider in 2018 by Cambridge University Press is here: https://schcs.github.io/WP/index.php/book/
- ARC Discovery project (DP200100080) Exceptionally symmetric combinatorial designs (2020-2023)
- ARC Discovery project (DP190100450) Complexity of group algorithms and statistical fingerprints of group (2019-2022)
- Isaac Newton Institute Cambridge, (supported by EPSRC grant no. EP/R014604/1) Groups, representations and applications: new perspectives (2020; and 2022)
Selected Academic Services and Functions (2009-2022)