Associate Professor Andrew Francis

• Biography
• Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise
• Grants / Current Projects
• Awards and Recognition
• Selected Publications
• Optional
• Contact Details

Biography

I have worked at the University of Western Sydney since the year 2000, following a post-doctoral position in the University of Virginia Department of Mathematics. My studies have been at the University of Sydney, where I completed a BSc(Hons I) in Pure Mathematics, and at the University of New South Wales, where I completed a PhD, also in Pure Mathematics.

In January 2011, I will begin a four year ARC Future Fellowship at UWS, to work on a project using algebraic tools to model evolutionary processes in bacteria. As part of this project I will be recruiting a postdoctoral research fellow and PhD students. Please contact me directly if you are interested in these positions.

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Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

My research interests are in two fields, Algebra and Mathematical Biology. My algebra interests lie in the structure of certain 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.

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Grants / Current Projects

2010-2014 ARC Future Fellowship ($670,732), "Algebraic evolution and evolutionary algebra".

2009–2013 ARC Discovery Grant ($613,000). Mark Tanaka, Andrew Francis and Ruiting Lan, “Mathematical models and bioinformatic analyses of bacterial genome evolution”.

2005–2007 ARC Discovery Grant ($265,000). Mark Tanaka and Andrew Francis, “Evolutionary models and bioinformatic analyses of genetic variation in pathogens”.

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Awards and Recognition

ARC Future Fellow, 2010-2014.

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Selected Publications

Sara Ballouz, Andrew R. Francis, Ruiting Lan and Mark M. Tanaka, Conditions for the evolution of gene clusters in bacterial genomes, PLoS Computational Biology, 2010, 6(2): e1000672.

Paul G. Stevenson, Mariam Mnatsakanyan, Andrew R. Francis, R. Andrew Shalliker, A discussion on the process of defining two-dimensional separation selectivity, Journal of Separation Science, 2010, 33, 1405-1413.

Fabio Luciani, Scott A. Sisson, Honglin Jiang, Andrew R. Francis and Mark M. Tanaka, The epidemiological fitness cost of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, August 25, 2009, 106(34), 14711–14715.

Andrew Francis and Lenny Jones, A new integral basis for the centre of the Hecke algebra of type A, Journal of Algebra, 321 (3), 2009, 866–878.

Andrew Francis and Weiqiang Wang, The centers of Iwahori-Hecke algebras are filtered, Representation Theory, 29-38, Contemporary Mathematics, 478, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2009.

Chaka Tang, Josephine F. Reyes, Fabio Luciani, Andrew R. Francis and Mark M. Tanaka, spolTools: online utilities for analyzing spoligotypes of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, Bioinformatics, 2008, 24 (20), 2414-2415.

Josephine F. Reyes, Andrew R. Francis and Mark M. Tanaka, Models of deletion for visualizing bacterial variation: an application to tuberculosis spoligotypes, BMC Bioinformatics, 2008, 9:496.

Fabio Luciani, Andrew R. Francis and Mark M. Tanaka, Interpreting genotype cluster sizes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates typed with IS6110 and spoligotyping, Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 8 (2), 2008, 182-190.

Andrew Francis and Lenny Jones, On the square root of the centre of the Hecke algebra of type A, Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, 82, 2007, 209-220.

Andrew Francis and John J Graham, Centres of Hecke algebras: the Dipper-James conjecture, Journal of Algebra. 306 (1), 2006, 244-267. Special Issue in Honour of Gordon Douglas James.

Mark M Tanaka and Andrew R Francis, Detecting emerging strains of tuberculosis by using spoligotypes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, October 10, 2006, 103 (41), 15266-15271.

Mark M Tanaka, Andrew R Francis, Fabio Luciani and Scott Sisson, Using approximate Bayesian computation to estimate tuberculosis transmission parameters from genotype data, Genetics, July 2006, 173 (3) 1511-1520.

Mark M Tanaka, Renault Phong and Andrew R Francis, An evaluation of indices for quantifying tuberculosis transmission using genotypes of pathogen isolates, BMC Infectious Diseases 2006, 6:92.

Andrew Francis and Lenny Jones, On bases of centres of Iwahori-Hecke algebras of the symmetric group, Journal of Algebra, 289 (1), 2005, 42-69.

Mark M Tanaka and Andrew R Francis, Methods of quantifying and visualising outbreaks of tuberculosis using genotypic information Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 5 (1), January 2005, 35-43.

Andrew Francis, Centralizers of Iwahori-Hecke algebras II: the general case, Algebra Colloquium, 10 (1), 2003, 95-100.

Andrew Francis, The Brauer homomorphism and the minimal basis for the centre of an Iwahori-Hecke algebra of type A, Communications in Algebra, 2001, 29 (1), 85-97.

Andrew Francis, Centralizers of Iwahori-Hecke algebras, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 2001, 353 (7), 2725-2739.

Andrew Francis, The minimal basis for the centre of an Iwahori-Hecke algebra, Journal of Algebra, 1999, 221 (1), 1-28.

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Optional

University Roles:

Member of UWS Academic Senate, 2007-2011

Chair, UWS Mathematics Expert Advisory Group 2010-2011.

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