Mathematician Alina Ostafe receives ARC Future Fellowship
The four-year fellowships are awarded by the Australian Research Council to outstanding Australian mid-career researchers.
Published on the 09 July 2025 by Susannah Waters
We are delighted to announce that听Associate Professor Alina Ostafe听has been awarded an ARC Future Fellowship.
The听Future Fellowships scheme reflects the Australian Government鈥檚 commitment to excellence in research by supporting excellent mid-career researchers to undertake high quality research in areas of national and international benefit.
Associate Professor Alina Ostafe's successful project is titled "".听The aim of the project is to investigate various aspects of arithmetic statistics and pseudorandomness in Number Theory and Dynamics, with applications to Quantum Chaos.
These include arithmetic statistics of matrix groups over number theoretic domains, randomness aspects of orbits generated by arithmetic dynamical systems, as well as investigating the pseudorandomness nature of the renowned cat map, providing a discrete model of quantum chaos. Important outcomes include progress towards several conjectures, as well as developing a variety of new number theoretic methods which are both novel and deep. It will continue to drive and influence research in mathematics as well as more applied areas beyond the confines of this project.
鈥淭he project will explore how families of important algebraic and number theoretic objects, such as matrices and polynomials over integers, behave and the randomness they exhibit. Developing new methods for detecting and extracting this randomness has far reaching consequences for number theory and its applications, including cryptography and mathematical physics.鈥
Providing four-year fellowships, the scheme aims to support excellent basic and applied research by outstanding mid-career researchers to be recruited and retained by universities in continuing academic positions; to foster national and international research collaboration; support excellent and innovative research that addresses a significant gap or in knowledge or represents value for money; and create new or advanced knowledge resulting from the outcomes of the research with economic, commercial, environmental social and/or cultural benefits for Australia, enhancing the scale and focus of research in Australian Government priority areas.听
The Future Fellowships program supports research in areas of national critical importance by giving outstanding researchers incentives to conduct their research in Australia. The objective is to attract and retain the best and brightest mid-career researchers.
A/Prof Ostafe was awarded funding of听$1,274,832 to support her research.
A very warm congratulations to Associate Professor Alina Ostafe for this exceptional achievement!
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Photography: Ken Leanfore
Alina Ostafe