Dr. Sophie Huczynska
Current Position
I am a Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at
the University of St Andrews.
Until October 2010, I was a Royal Society
Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow .
My research is mainly in the areas of number theory and combinatorics; I also have
interests in algebra and theoretical computer science. I am a member of the Centre for Interdiscipinary
Research in Computational Algebra (CIRCA).
Please note: I am now working on a part-time basis. I can be contacted in the department on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays until mid-afternoon, and on Monday afternoons.
Teaching
- Session 2012-13: I am teaching on modules MT2001 and MT2005, both in Semester 2.
Lecture notes and tutorial sheets are available via the MMS system.
Current research interests
- Finite fields
Various aspects of finite fields, especially the existence and properties of generating elements with extra properties.
- Combinatorics
A range of topics in combinatorics: some related to my interests in finite fields (eg construction of combinatorial objects and codes using finite fields) and others of quite a different flavour (ranging from the structure theory of classes of combinatorial objects, to permutation patterns, to intersecting sets, and many more).
Recent/ forthcoming talks
- I was an Invited Speaker at the RICAM Workshop on Finite Fields and their Applications: Character sums and polynomials, September 2012, Austria. The slides for this talk may be found here .
- I will be a Plenary Speaker at Fq11 - the 11th International Conference on Finite Fields and their Applications, which will take place in Magdeburg, Germany, in July 2013. Information about the conference may be found here .
Academic service
Public understanding
- To read a non-specialist account of my work and its possible applications, see the article "Euler's Revolution" by Ian Stewart, which appeared in the New Scientist magazine (issue 24-30 March 2007).
Supervision
Fiona Brunk:(2009) completed her PhD on "Intersection problems in combinatorics", jointly supervised by Nik Ruskuc and myself.
Publications
To appear/submitted
"Existence and properties of k-normal elements over finite fields", S.Huczynska, G.L.Mullen, D.Panario and D.Thomson, preprint.
"Beyond sum-free sets in the natural numbers", S. Huczynska, preprint.
Published
Books
"Surveys in Combinatorics", 2009, S.Huczynska, J.D.Mitchell and C.Roney-Dougal (eds). LMS Lecture Note Series, 365, Cambridge University Press 2009.
Book chapters
"Existence results for finite field polynomials with specified properties", in Finite Fields and Their Applications: Character Sums and Polynomials, P. Charpin, A. Pott and A. Winterhof (eds), De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston, (in press) 2013.
Journal papers
"The strong primitive normal basis theorem", S.D.Cohen and S.Huczynska, Acta Arithmetica 143 (2010), 299--332.
``Some Erdo"s-Ko-Rado theorems for injections", F.Brunk and S.Huczynska, European Journal of Combinatorics 31 (2010), 839--860.
``Equidistant frequency permutation arrays and related constant composition codes", S.Huczynska, Designs, Codes and Cryptography 54 (2010), 109--120.
"The extent to which subsets are additively closed", S.Huczynska, G.L.Mullen and J.Yucas, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 116 (2009), 831--843.
"Decomposing simple permutations, with enumerative consequences", R. Brignall, S. Huczynska and V. Vatter, Combinatorica 28 (2008), 385--400.
"Simple permutations and algebraic generating functions", R. Brignall, S. Huczynska and V. Vatter, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 115, 423--441.
"Pattern classes of permutations via bijections between linearly ordered sets", S. Huczynska and N. Ruskuc, European Journal of Combinatorics 29 (2008), 118--139.
"Powerline communication and the 36 officers problem", S. Huczynska, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 364 (2006).
"Frequency permutation arrays", S.Huczynska and G.L.Mullen, Journal of Combinatorial Designs 14 (2006), 463--478.
"Grid classes and the Fibonacci dichotomy for restricted permutations", S. Huczynska and V. Vatter, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 13 (2006)
"Primitive free cubics with specified norm and trace", S.Huczynska and S.D.Cohen, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 355 (2003), 3099--3116.
"Primitive free quartics with specified norm and trace", S.D.Cohen and S.Huczynska, Acta Arithmetica 109 (2003), 359--385.
"The Primitive Normal Basis Theorem- without a computer", S.D.Cohen and S.Huczynska, Journal of the London Mathematical Society, 67 (2003), 41--56 .
Conference papers
``Modelling equidistant frequency permutation arrays in constraints", Ian P. Gent, Paul McKay, Ian Miguel, Pete Nightingale and Sophie Huczynska, Proceedings of Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming(CP 2009).
"The Homer System", S. Colton and S. Huczynska, Automated Deduction – CADE-19: 19th International Conference on Automated Deduction, 2003, Franz Baeder (ed), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer.
Other work-related activities
- I referee for various journals including Designs, Codes and Cryptography, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Finite Fields and their Applications, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and others.
- I am a reviewer for Zentralblatt MATH..
- I was Local Organizer of the 22nd British Combinatorial Conference, held here in St Andrews in July 2009. The webpage from the conference is available here.
- I was on the organizing committee of several in the series of "International Conferences on Pattern Avoiding Permutations".
Contact details:
Sophie Huczynska
School of Mathematics and Statistics
University of St Andrews
Mathematical Institute (Room 214)
North Haugh
St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9SS
SCOTLAND
Tel: +44 (0)1334 463711
E-mail: My departmental email address is: sophieh 'at'
mcs.st-and.ac.uk
I am also contactable at: sophie.huczynska 'at' st-and.ac.uk.