Ian M. Wanless

Prof Ian M. Wanless is a Professor in the School of Mathematics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has held academic positions at institutions including the Australian National University (ANU), University of Melbourne, Christ Church Oxford, and Charles Darwin University. His research primarily focuses on combinatorics, with specializations in Latin squares, matrix permanents, graph theory, and algebraic structures. He has made significant contributions to the enumeration and properties of Latin squares, including groundbreaking work on transversals, orthogonality, and symmetry. Wanless has also explored connections between Latin squares and algebraic structures like quasigroups and loops.

His education includes a PhD from ANU (supervised by Brendan McKay) and postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford and ANU. He has been awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2011) and has led major research initiatives, including organizing international conferences (e.g., 5ICC in 2017). His work spans theoretical results and computational methods, with over 100 publications in top journals like Journal of Combinatorial Theory and SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics.

Wanless’s research interests extend to design theory, hypergraphs, and permutation polynomials. He co-edits the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics and has held leadership roles in professional societies, including president of the Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia. His current projects include studies on perfect 1-factorizations, covering radii of permutation sets, and algebraic properties of Latin squares.