Dept. of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. EH14 4AS; Tel: +44 131 451 8092; Email: dj26 ("a" with a circle) hw.ac.uk;

The email address has ("a" with a circle) instead of @ to stop spy robots. I welcome any better ideas to defeat these junk monsters

About Me

This is the academic webpage of Dave Jones, i.e me. As I'm sure there are a few Dave Jones' out there I will expand further. I am in my second year of study for a PhD in mathematics at Heriot-Watt University and I'm supervised by Dr. Mark V. Lawson. We both consider working with each other a form of missionary work but for very different reasons (He believes that I'm infected with northernness and the contagious incurable disease of sport. I feel I shouldn't say my reasons). Previous to attending Heriot-Watt I was a student of Derwent College at the University of York where I completed an MMath.

In my first six months in Edinburgh I completed three SMSTC video-conferencing courses, namely Algebra, Pure Analysis and Geometry & Topology. Simultaneously I began researching in the theory of nested stack automata. After returning from the easter break of 2008 I started work on a new research question regarding the polycyclic monoids. This work has been the major focus of my attention ever since.

My attention on the polycyclic monoids has manly been restricted to an inverse submonoid we currently call Qn. This is the closed wide inverse submonoid corresponding to the congruence x~y iff x and y have the same length in the free monoid. We are looking to completely classify all actions of Qn. This follows on from the work of Lawson in his preprint.

Conferences and Workshops

While studying inverse semigroups I have been lucky enough to have attended a number of conferences and workshops. Here is a collection;

• Workshop on "Topics in Geometric group Theory". Edinburgh, Scotland, 1st-5th September 2008
• EMS Postgraduate Students' Meeting. The Burn, Edzell, Scotland, 3rd-5th June 2008
• BMC 2008 including a semigroup splinter group. The University of York, UK, 24th-29th March 2008

I regularly attend the North British Semigroup and Applications Network meetings. At the time of writing there has been only two meeting which I attended in full. The next meeting will be in Heriot-Watt on 23rd July and there is a chance I might give my first talk.

Hobbies and Interests

Sports. By this I mean football, rugby and cricket. I will watch almost any top class match in anyone of these sports, paying particular attention to Manchester United, both the English and Welsh football teams, both the English and Welsh rugby teams and the England and Wales cricket team. I also regularly play both football and cricket. There are other games (like tennis) and hobbies (like mountain biking) but these are not sports. You are more than welcome to partake in these games and hobbies however. Films. Both arthouse and blockbuster. I recently moved flats and in doing so realised I have too many dvds. I should buy more books instead (recently started reading David Peace's Red Riding books after watching the disappointing TV show, wanted to know what the fuss was about).

Thanks

I should really say thank you to Mark for supervising and supporting me this far. I hope this will continue until I am awarded my PhD and possibly after. Also cheers to Conny and Giorgos for technical help in making this page.