Lesley Ward

Prof Lesley Ward

Professor of Mathematics

School of Mathematical Sciences

College of Science

Available For Media Comment.

Lesley Ward is a Professor of Mathematics at UniSA. She is a Fellow of the US Association for Women in Mathematics, and a Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society, and was recently a Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge. She earned degrees from ANU and Yale University, then held positions at Rice University, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), and Harvey Mudd College.  Her research is in harmonic analysis and complex analysis. She also works in industrial applications of mathematics, and is a past Director of the UniSA Mathematics Clinic. She was the Conference Director of the WIMSIG Conference 2017: Celebration of Women in Australian Mathematical Sciences. She has given plenary lectures at the annual conferences of the AustMS (2016) and NZMS (2018). Her book “Harmonic Analysis: From Fourier to Wavelets”, co-authored with M. Cristina Pereyra, was published by the American Mathematical Society in 2012. Lesley Ward was Chair of the Women in Mathematics Group (WIMSIG) (2015-2016) of the AustMS, and has worked on gender equity issues in STEM disciplines at five institutions over many years. She has won several teaching awards, notably the Mathematical Association of America’s Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching.

2020--present: Professor of Mathematics, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, UniSA.
2015--2019: Associate Professor of Mathematics, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, UniSA.
2006--2014: Senior Lecturer, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences (until 2012 the School of Mathematics and Statistics), UniSA.
2003--2006: Associate Professor, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California, USA.
1997--2003: Assistant Professor, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California, USA.
1995: Postdoctoral Fellow, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley, California, USA. Spring semester.
1994--1997: G.C. Evans Instructor of Mathematics, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.
Selected awards and distinctions
2017: Conference Director, WIMSIG Conference 2017: Celebration of Women in Australian Mathematical Sciences, http://www.austms.org.au/WIMSIG-conference-2017 , University of South Australia, 24--26 Sep 2017.
2017: Co-organiser, The AMSI/AustMS 2017 Workshop in Harmonic Analysis and PDE, http://www.mq.edu.au/about/about-the-university/faculties-and-departments/faculty-of-science-and-engineering/departments-and-centres/department-of-mathematics/news-and-events/2017-harmonic-analysis-and-pde-workshop , Macquarie University, 17--21 Jul 2017.
2015: Co-organiser, http://www.unisa.edu.au/ices Indigenous Content in Education Symposium (ICES '15), University of South Australia, 21 Sep 2015.
2014: Co-organiser, Special Session in Harmonic Analysis and PDEs, http://www.austms2014.ms.unimelb.edu.au/ 8th Australia--New Zealand Mathematics Convention, incorporating the 58th Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society and the 2014 New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium, University of Melbourne, 8--12 Dec.
2014: Co-organiser, http://unisa.edu.au/mathssymposium Indigenous Content in STEM Symposium, Division of ITEE, UniSA, 26 Aug 2014.
2014: Co-organiser, http://rutherglen.science.mq.edu.au/ha2014/ The AMSI/AustMS 2014 Workshop in Harmonic Analysis and its Applications, Macquarie University, 21--25 Jul 2014.
2013: Senior Visiting Fellow, IPAM, UCLA, Program on Interactions between Analysis and Geometry. March.
2009: Visiting Researcher, Department of Mathematics, Brown University, USA. Oct--Dec.
2009: Visiting Researcher, Departamento de Matematica, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO), Brazil. Aug--Oct.
2008--2009: Chair of Local Organising Committee, Member of Programme Committee, and Treasurer, http://w3.unisa.edu.au/austms2009/ 53rd Annual Conference of the Australian Mathematical Society, held 28 Sep--1 Oct 2009, UniSA. Jan 2008--June 2009
2006: Mathematical Association of America (MAA) http://www.maa.org/Awards/alder.html Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member. One of three awarded in the US and Canada.
2006: My department (http://www.math.hmc.edu/ Department of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College) was awarded the inaugural http://www.ams.org/ams/press/mudd-05.html American Mathematical Society (AMS) Award for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department. All departments of mathematical sciences in the US and Canada that offer at least a bachelor's degree in mathematical sciences are eligible.
2004: http://nieis.anu.edu.au/programs/NIEIS_programs_weis.html WEIS Visiting Fellowship for a Senior Academic Woman in Engineering and Information Sciences, National Institute of Engineering and Information Sciences (NIEIS), Australian National University.
2004: Taught short course with Cristina Pereyra on Harmonic Analysis: From Fourier to Haar, http://www.math.ias.edu/womensprogram/ IAS/Princeton Program for Women in Mathematics, Analysis and Nonlinear PDEs, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. May.
2003: Taught short course on Wavelets, http://pcmi.ias.edu/ IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute, Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations, Park City, Utah. July.
1995: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley, California, Program in Complex Dynamics and Hyperbolic Geometry.
1991--1992: Yale Prize Teaching Fellowship. Awarded for `excellence in performance as a Teaching Fellow', to eight PhD students chosen from all departments at Yale University.
1986: Tillyard Prize, Australian National University. Awarded to the student whose personal qualities and contribution to University life have been outstanding and who in the year of the award has completed a Degree of Bachelor with Honours.
1986: Hanna Neumann Prize for Mathematics IV (Honours), Australian National University.

  • Harmonic analysis
  • Complex analysis
  • Internet search algorithms
  • Industrial mathematics

Research collaborators

  • Amie Albrecht, UniSA, Australia
  • Ariel Barton, University of Arkansas, USA 
  • John Boland, UniSA, Australia
  • Daniel Boylan, AXA Equitable Life Insurance Complany, USA
  • Lucas Chaffee, Western Washington University, USA
  • Peng Chen, Sun Yat-sen University, China
  • Darren Crowdy, Imperial College London, UK
  • Xuan Thinh Duong, Macquarie University, Australia
  • Ayman Farahat, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, USA
  • Guillermo Flores, Universidad Catolica de Cordoba and Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina
  • Adrian Grantham, UniSA, Australia
  • Christopher Green, Wichita State University, USA
  • Yanchang Han, South China Normal University, China
  • Yongsheng Han, Auburn University, USA
  • Peter Jones, Yale University, USA
  • Ming-yi Lee, National Central University, Taiwan
  • Ji Li, Macquarie University, Australia
  • Tom LoFaro, Gustavus Adolphus College, USA
  • Gaven Martin, Massey University, NZ
  • Joel Miller, Monash University, Australia
  • Trang T.T. Nguyen, Flinders University, Australia
  • Cristina Pereyra, University of New Mexico, USA 
  • Jill Pipher, Brown University, USA
  • Cheryl Praeger, University of Western Australia, Australia
  • Peter Pudney, UniSA, Australia
  • Greg Rae, Google, USA
  • Fred Schaefer, Oregon State University, USA
  • Marie Snipes, Kenyon College, USA 
  • Susan Staples, Texas Christian University, USA
  • Rodolfo Torres, University of Kansas, USA
  • Byron Walden, Santa Clara University, USA
  • Brett Wick, Washington University -- St Louis, USA
  • Xiao Xiao, Brown University, USA
  • Lixin Yan, Sun Yat-sen University, China

Year Citation
2025 Green, C. C., Mahenthiram, A., & Ward, L. A. (2025). Harmonic-measure distribution functions of multiply connected domains with various geometries. Royal Society of London. Proceedings A. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 481(2321, article no. 20240392), 1-29.
DOI Scopus1
2024 Praeger, C., & Ward, L. (2024). Women working in mathematics in Australian universities, and the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group (WIMSIG). Australian Mathematical Society. Gazette, 51(1), 4-45.
2023 Flores, G. J., Li, J., & Ward, L. A. (2023). Zygmund type and flag type maximal functions, and sparse operators. American Mathematical Society, 151(2), 555-567.
DOI
2022 Chen, P., Li, J., Ward, L., & Yan, L. (2022). Weak-type endpoint bounds for Bochner-Riesz means for the Hermite operator. Comptes Rendus Mathematique, 360(1), 111-126.
DOI Scopus1 WoS2
2022 Green, C. C., Snipes, M. A., Ward, L. A., & Crowdy, D. G. (2022). Harmonic-measure distribution functions for a class of multiply connected symmetrical slit domains. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 478(2259, article no. 20210832), 1-20.
DOI Scopus7
2022 Flores, G., & Ward, L. (2022). Unboundedness for some strong maximal functions on weighted Lebesgue spaces. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, 513(2), 1-17.
DOI
2021 Nguyen, T. T. T., & Ward, L. A. (2021). Functions of bounded mean oscillation and quasisymmetric mappings on spaces of homogeneous type. Journal of Geometric Analysis, 31(12), 12182-12230.
DOI Scopus1
2021 Chen, P., Tian, X., & Ward, L. A. (2021). The commutators of Bochner-Riesz operators for elliptic operators. Tohoku Mathematical Journal, 73(3), 403-419.
DOI Scopus1
2021 Han, Y., Li, J., Pereyra, M. C., & Ward, L. A. (2021). Atomic decomposition of product Hardy spaces via wavelet bases on spaces of homogeneous type. New York Journal of Mathematics, 27, 1173-1239.
Scopus8 WoS6
2021 Huang, L., Santhosh Kumar, S., Ong, W. M., Pandos, N., Ryan, M., Thiel, S., . . . Ward, L. A. (2021). Detecting copper deposits with logistic regression. MESA Journal, 94(1), 41-47.
2020 Li, J., Nguyen, T. T. T., Ward, L. A., & Wick, B. D. (2020). The Cauchy integral, bounded and compact commutators. Studia Mathematica, 250(2), 193-216.
DOI Scopus13 WoS12
2019 Boylan, D. M., Mills, S. J., & Ward, L. A. (2019). Construction of an exotic measure: dyadic doubling and triadic doubling does not imply doubling. Journal of mathematical analysis and applications, 476(2), 241-277.
DOI Scopus4
2018 Chaffee, L., Chen, P., Han, Y., Torres, R. H., & Ward, L. A. (2018). Characterization of compactness of commutators of bilinear singular integral operators. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, 146(9), 3943-3953.
DOI Scopus19
2018 Han, Y., Li, J., & Ward, L. A. (2018). Hardy space theory on spaces of homogeneous type via orthonormal wavelet bases. Applied and computational harmonic analysis, 45(1), 120-169.
DOI Scopus48 WoS44
2017 Grantham, A. P., Pudney, P. J., Ward, L. A., Belusko, M., & Boland, J. W. (2017). Generating synthetic five-minute solar irradiance values from hourly observations. Solar Energy, 147, 209-221.
DOI Scopus34 WoS34
2017 Grantham, A., Pudney, P., Ward, L. A., Whaley, D., & Boland, J. (2017). The viability of electrical energy storage for low-energy households. Solar energy, 155, 1216-1224.
DOI Scopus37 WoS31
2017 Snipes, M. A., & Ward, L. A. (2017). Harmonic measure distributions of planar domains: a survey. The journal of analysis, 24(2), 293-330.
DOI Scopus12
2017 Chen, P., Duong, X. T., Li, J., Ward, L. A., & Yan, L. (2017). Marcinkiewicz-type spectral multipliers on Hardy and Lebesgue spaces on product spaces of homogeneous type. Journal of fourier analysis and applications, 23(1), 21-64.
DOI Scopus16 WoS14
2016 Chen, P., Duong, X. T., Li, J., Ward, L. A., & Yan, L. (2016). Product Hardy spaces associated to operators with heat kernel bounds on spaces of homogeneous type. Mathematische zeitschrift, 282(3/4), 1033-1065.
DOI Scopus21 WoS17
2016 Kairema, A., Li, J., Pereyra, M. C., & Ward, L. A. (2016). Haar bases on quasi-metric measure spaces, and dyadic structure theorems for function spaces on product spaces of homogeneous type. Journal of functional analysis, 271(7), 1793-1843.
DOI Scopus21 WoS22
2016 Lee, M. Y., Li, J., & Ward, L. A. (2016). On weak-star convergence in product Hardy spaces on spaces of homogeneous type. Studia mathematica, 235(3), 251-267.
DOI Scopus2 WoS2
2015 Li, J., Pipher, J., & Ward, L. A. (2015). Dyadic structure theorems for multiparameter function spaces. Revista Matematica Iberoamericana, 31(3), 767-797.
DOI Scopus19 WoS19
2014 Barton, A., & Ward, L. A. (2014). A new class of harmonic measure distribution functions. Journal of geometric analysis, 24(4), 2035-2071.
DOI Scopus5
2013 Li, J., & Ward, L. A. (2013). Singular integrals on Carleson measure spaces CMOp on product spaces of homogeneous type. Proceedings of the American mathematical society, 141(8), 2767-2782.
DOI Scopus20 WoS20
2013 Chen, P., Li, J., & Ward, L. A. (2013). BMO from dyadic BMO via expectations on product spaces of homogeneous type. Journal of functional analysis, 265(10), 2420-2451.
DOI Scopus9 WoS9
2011 Pipher, J., Ward, L. A., & Xiao, X. (2011). Geometrie-arithmetic averaging of dyadic weights. Revista Matematica Iberoamericana, 27(3), 953-976.
DOI Scopus10 WoS11
2008 Pipher, J., & Ward, L. A. (2008). BMO from dyadic BMO on the bidisc. Journal of the London Mathematical Society, 77(2), 524-544.
DOI
2007 Snipes, M., & Ward, L. A. (2007). Convergence properties of harmonic measure distributions for planar domains. Complex variables and elliptic equations, 53(10), 897-913.
DOI Scopus8
2007 Walden, B., & Ward, L. A. (2007). A harmonic measure interpretation of the arithmetic-geometric mean. American mathematical monthly, 114(7), 610-621.
DOI Scopus5
2006 Farahat, A., LoFaro, T., Miller, J., Rae, G., & Ward, L. A. (2006). Authority rankings from HITS, PageRank, and SALSA : Existence, uniqueness, and effect of initialization. SIAM journal on scientific computing, 27(4), 1181-1201.
DOI
2005 Snipes, M., & Ward, L. A. (2005). Realizing step functions as harmonic measure distributions of planar domains. Annales Academiae Scinetiarum Fennicae Mathematica.
2002 Ward, L. A. (2002). Translation averages of dyadic weights are not always good weights. Revista matematica iberoamericana.
2001 Walden, B., & Ward, L. A. (2001). Asymptotic behaviour of distributions of harmonic measure for planar domains. Complex variables: theory and applications, 46(2), 157-177.
DOI

Year Citation
2007 Ward, L., Jensen, A., Lyon, J., McLeman, C., & Tysinger, B. (2007). US20070129899, Automatic threshold setting for quantitative polymerase chain reaction.

  • Multiparameter Harmonic Analysis: Weighted Estimates for Singular Integrals, ARC - Discovery Projects, 01/01/2016 - 30/06/2020

  • Harmonic analysis: Function spaces and singular integral operators, ARC - Discovery Projects, 31/10/2012 - 31/12/2017

Courses I teach

  • MATH 2027 Fundamentals of Real Analysis (2025)
  • MATH 3021 Mathematics Clinic 1 (2025)
  • MATH 1056 Linear Algebra (2024)
  • MATH 2027 Fundamentals of Real Analysis (2024)
  • MATH 3021 Mathematics Clinic 1 (2024)
  • MATH 3034 Mathematics Clinic 2 (2024)

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