Professor Andrew Francis

ARC Professor,
Mathematics

Personal
Contact
Biography
Publications
Research
Supervision

Personal

Qualifications

PhD University of New South Wales
BSc University of Sydney

UWS Organisational Unit (School / Division)

Mathematics

Professional Memberships

Australian Mathematical Society (1995-01-01)

Contact

Email:	A.FRANCIS@uws.edu.au
Extension:	9236
Mobile:
Location:	EN.1.40 Parramatta
Website:

Biography

Professor Andrew Francis is an ARC Future Fellow who works on research problems relating bacterial evolution to algebraic structures. He joined UWS in the year 2000 as a Lecturer in Mathematics, after a post-doctoral position at the University of Virginia. His PhD and initial research interests were in the representation theory of finite groups, in particular the structure of Iwahori-Heck algebras, looked at from a combinatorial point of view. He began a parallel research programme in mathematical biology in 2002, and recently has begun bringing his two areas of expertise together by modelling evolution algebraically.

Professor Francis has held a number of governance posts, including being on Academic Senate 2007-2011. He chaired the Senate's Mathematics Expert Advisory Group in 2010 that reviewed issues relating to all levels of mathematics at UWS and made many recommendations. He is currently on the Council of the Australian Mathematical Society.

This information has been contributed by Professor Francis.

Publications

Books

Francis, A., Matawie, K., Oshlack, A. and Smyth, G. (2005), 'Statistical Solutions to Modern Problems: Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Statistical Modelling, Sydney, July 2005', : University of Western Sydney 1741081017.

Journal Articles

Francis, A. and Tanaka, M. (2012), 'Evolution of variation in presence and absence of genes in bacterial pathways', BMC Evolutionary Biology, 11.
Francis, A. and Jones, L. (2011), 'Monomial bases for the centres of the group algebra and iwahori-hecke algebra of the symmetric group', Far East Journal of Mathematical Sciences, 25.
Ballouz, S., Francis, A., Lan, R. and Tanaka, M. (2010), 'Conditions for the Evolution of Gene Clusters in Bacterial Genomes', PLoS Computational Biology, 10.
Stevenson, P., Mnatsakanyan, M., Francis, A. and Shalliker, R. (2010), 'A Discussion on the Process of Defining Two-Dimensional Separation Selectivity', Journal of Separation Science, 9.
Francis, A. and Jones, L. (2009), 'A new integral basis for the centre of the Iwahori-Hecke algebra of type A', Journal of Algebra, 13.
Luciani, F., Sisson, S., Jiang, H., Francis, A. and Tanaka, M. (2009), 'The epidemiological fitness cost of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis', Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 5.
Luciani, F., Francis, A. and Tanaka, M. (2008), 'Interpreting genotype cluster sizes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates typed with IS6110 and spoligotyping', Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 9.
Reyes, J., Francis, A. and Tanaka, M. (2008), 'Models of deletion for visualizing bacterial variation: an application to tuberculosis spoligotypes', BMC Bioinformatics, .
Tang, C., Reyes, J., Luciani, F., Francis, A. and Tanaka, M. (2008), 'spolTools: online utilities for analyzing spoligotypes of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex', Bioinformatics, 2.
Francis, A. and Jones, L. (2007), 'On the square root of the centre of the Hecke algebra of type A', Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, 12.
Tanaka, M. and Francis, A. (2006), 'Detecting emerging strains of tuberculosis by using spoligotypes', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 6.
Tanaka, M., Phong, R. and Francis, A. (2006), 'An evaluation of indices for quantifying tuberculosis transmission using genotypes of pathogen isolates', BMC Infectious Diseases, .
Francis, A. and Graham, J. (2006), 'Centres of Hecke algebras: the Dipper-James conjecture', Journal of Algebra, 24.
Tanaka, M., Francis, A., Luciani, F. and Sisson, S. (2006), 'Using Approximate Bayesian Computation to Estimate Tuberculosis Transmission Parameters From Genotype Data', Genetics, 10.
Tanaka, M. and Francis, A. (2005), 'Methods of quantifying and visualising outbreaks of tuberculosis using genotypic information', Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 9.
Francis, A. and Jones, L. (2005), 'On bases of centres of Iwahori-Hecke algebras of the symmetric group', Journal of Algebra, 28.
Francis, A. (2003), 'Centralizers of Iwahori-Hecke algebras II: the general case', Algebra Colloquium, 6.
Francis, A. (2001), 'The Brauer Homomorphism and the minimal basis for centres of Iwahori-Hecke algebra', Communications in Algebra, 13.

Conference Papers

Francis, A. and Jones, L. (2012), 'Multiplicative bases for the centres of the group algebra and Iwahori-Hecke algebra of the symmetric group', 2009-2011 Southeastern Lie Theory Workshop Series, held October 9-11, 2009 at North Carolina State University, May 22-24, 2010, at the University of Georgia, and June 1-4, 2011 at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Francis, A. and Jones, L. (2012), 'Multiplicative bases for the centres of the group algebra and Iwahori-Hecke algebra of the symmetric group', Southeastern Lie Theory Workshop: Finite and Algebraic Groups, University of Virginia.
Francis, A. and Wang, W. (2009), 'The centers of Iwahori-Hecke algebras are filtered', Fourth International Conference on Representation Theory, Lhasa, China.

Research

My research interests are in algebra and in mathematical biology. My algebra interests lie in the structure of Hecke algebras, that arise in the representation theory of finite groups. My mathematical biology interests are to do with understanding the evolutionary processes of bacterial organisms. I am interested in thinking about "the way things work" and using mathematical ways of thinking to clarify problems. My current research focuses on ways to employ algebraic ways of thinking to address evolutionary questions.