Profiles

Name: Maya Muthuswamy
Type: PhD Student
Department/School: Mathematics & Statistics

Maya commenced her PhD in 2005 and her research project involves the mathematical modelling of granular materials – things like soil, sand, grains or M&Ms. She says “the broad aim is to develop a constitutive model for a granular material, which is a rule that will tell us how a granular material will behave under applied loads.”

Maya’s experience of undertaking a PhD has been a rewarding one, even though it is difficult at times, especially “not having regular assessment type activities (like tests, assignments, exams in undergrad) to know how you’re going with it.”

Maya loves that a PhD allows her to always be learning, and making discoveries that no one has made before “when I’m working on a difficult problem, and I solve it, it’s a real buzz!”

Another highlight of her research has been the travel that she has done. Only just this year Maya has spent two months in the US “presenting at the Earth and Space 2006 conference in Houston, spending 6 weeks at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Centre with our collaborator, presenting at the 5th World Congress on Particle Technology in Florida, visiting Duke University’s physics lab, and spending 2 weeks doing research at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. This was an amazing experience – learning from so many brilliant scientists, and realising how much there is to learn.”

Maya’s exciting research was even featured recently in the Age under the heading –Scratching the surface of human life on the moon.” The article described how Maya and her colleagues are “using maths modelling and simulated materials to determine how the moon and Mars would react to drilling, digging and building” [The Age, 29/09/2006, p3].