People

Going round in circles!

Sudoku puzzles have taken the world by storm in the past year, and feature on a daily basis in national newspapers.

Now Essex mathematician Professor Peter Higgins has invented a circular form of the famous Japanese number puzzles, to satisfy the demand for new and challenging variations.

Professor Higgins’ puzzles – called Target Sudoku – first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph on 26 June, and continue as a weekly feature.

Translated from Japanese, Sudoku means single number. Typically the puzzles consist of a 9 x 9 grid in which each number from one to nine must appear in each row and column, plus in each of nine minor squares within the grid.

Professor Higgins, who is Head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, explained: ‘The idea of Sudoku is based on that of a so-called Latin Square. There have been sporadic attempts to introduce variants but I found they invariably involved just a bigger and more complicated version of the same array.’

Professor Higgins eventually hit upon the idea of circular Sudoku. ‘The charm of the puzzle is that the Latin squares have been smuggled in – they are not obvious at first glance, but they are there as you will discover as you toy with it,’ he said.

A simple puzzle, created specially for Wyvern, is printed on the Notices page (page18). Each of the digits 1-8 must appear in each of the four rings, and in each of the eight overlapping quarter circles.

A moderate level puzzle has 5-rings, ten slices, and so 50 cells, based on the numbers 0-9. Diabolical ones are still in the making.

Target Sudoku

Each of the digit 1-8 must appear in each of the four rings, and in each of the eight overlapping quarter circles.

Target Sudoku: Solution

Welcome to new faces

As the new University year gets underway, Wyvern introduces some of the new faces on campus.

Sue Endean replaced Ellen Sample as Director of Personnel Services last month. Sue came from Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust in Colchester where she was Deputy Director of Human Resources.

She had worked for the Trust for 17 years in a variety of roles, and this is her first post in higher education.

Stuart Bannerman took up the post of English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC) Director last term.

Stuart has been involved in the management and marketing of programmes for international students for 16 years at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Dundee and Queen Margaret University College.

As Head of English as a Foreign Language at Dundee, and Director of the International Study Centre at Queen Margaret, he pioneered flexible foundation programmes for both undergraduates and postgraduates.

He is studying for a Doctor of Education (EdD) award in International Education at the University of Bristol.

Dr Klaus D McDonald-Maier has been appointed as Reader in the Department of Computer Science. He has previously held posts at the University of Kent, the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and worked as a Systems-on-Chip architect at Infineon Technologies AG in Munich.

His research interests focus on embedded and intelligent systems, including the field of Systems-on-Chip architectures. His research also focuses on the application of artificial intelligence and neural engineering techniques in multiple disciplines such as biologically inspired movement systems.

He is currently holding EPSRC, industrial and EU research projects in areas such as automatic guidance and collision avoidance for maritime and land-based vessels, and model based development of safe embedded systems.

Much of Klaus’s work finds its way into people’s daily lives: everyday electronic items such as cars and mobile phones rely on embedded computer architectures for their safe operation. He holds eight patents for his innovations and has been awarded prestigious Proof of Concept funds to support the commercialisation of his achievements.

Klaus holds two visiting appointments in France.

Youseph Farah has joined the Department of Law as a Lecturer. Youseph studied for his LLB at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and came to Essex as a postgraduate student, first to study for the LLM in European Community Law and then as a research student.

Before appointment to his lectureship, Youseph worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Essex, and also lectured at the European Business School, London.

Youseph's main areas of interest are E-Commerce, Contract Law, European Union Law and Commercial Arbitration.

Dr Vadim Demidchik has been appointed as a Research Council UK Fellow and Lecturer in Stress Biology. Vadim formerly worked in the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Plant Sciences.

In Cambridge, he characterised for the first time plant ion channels activated by reactive oxygen species and plant neurotransmitter-activated receptors.

He brings expertise in plant electrophysiology and membrane biology that will significantly strengthen existing research on plant stress responses in the Department of Biological Sciences.

In the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Dr Lara Alcock has been appointed Teaching Fellow. Lara's research in the learning of mathematics at university level is published in a number of journals.

She comes to Essex from Rutgers University in the USA, where she held a joint appointment in mathematics and mathematics education, teaching both mathematics students and future high school mathematics teachers.

More new faces will be introduced in the November issue of Wyvern.

Also in the printed October edition of Wyvern:

• Ready to retire
• Award for children's lawyer