Staff profile

Qualifications

• BSc, PhD(Tasmania).

Teaching areas

• Discrete Mathematics and algebra at first and third year.

• Probability for engineers at first year.

• The mathematics of computational complexity at fourth year.

Supervision

• Present PhD Students:
  Nadia Dhamri “Dualisability of finite semigroups” (co-supervised with Brian Davey).

• Recent PhD completions:
  Belinda Trotta “Axiomatisability of topological prevarieties” (co-supervised with Brian Davey).

• Recent Honours Students:
  2007 Grant Harvey “Geometric Model Theory”.

Professional involvement

• I am an associate editor for Semigroup Forum, Algebra Universalis and for the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society.

• I am treasurer of the Victorian Algebra Group.  The group organises the annual Victorian Algebra Conference, which is now in its 26th year.

Research interests

• My research interests centre on semigroups, general (= universal) algebra, their interactions and their application in computer science.  Areas of particular interest are: problems of computational complexity for finite algebras and semigroups; problems concerning finite axiomatisability; algebras of functions/relations and their application.

Recent publications and presentations

• M. Jackson and T. Stokes, Semigroups with if-then-else and halting programs, Internat. J. Algebra Comput. 19 (2009), 937–961.
• M. Jackson and M. Volkov, Undecidable problems for completely 0-simple semigroups, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 213 (2009), 1961–1978.
• M. Jackson and M. Volkov, Relatively inherently nonfinitely q-based finite semigroups, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 361 (2009), 2181–2206.
• D. M. Clark, B. A. Davey, M. Jackson and J. G. Pitkethly, The axiomatizability of topological prevarieties, Adv. Math. 218 (2008), 1604–1653.
• M. Jackson, Flat algebras and the translation of universal Horn logic into equational logic, J. Symb. Logic 73 (2008), 90–128.