Rate My Professor Sanming Zhou

Sanming Zhou is a Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. He received his PhD with distinction from the University of Western Australia in 2000. Since the completion of his doctorate, Zhou has worked continuously at the University of Melbourne, where he advanced to the rank of full professor. His research spans discrete mathematics in both pure and applied contexts, including algebraic graph theory, graph theory, combinatorial optimization, theoretical computer science, network optimization, and operations research. Zhou teaches a range of courses such as introductory mathematics, Calculus 2, linear algebra, discrete mathematics and operations research, graph theory, decision making, network optimization, and modelling of business, management, and industrial problems. He coordinates the Discrete Structures and Algorithms seminar and reading group and supervises postgraduate research students.

Zhou has received major awards including the ARC Future Fellowship (2012-2015), the Kirkman Medal from the Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications (2003), and the ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003-2005). His research has been supported by numerous grants, such as ARC Discovery Projects on perfect codes in Cayley graphs (2025-2027, with B. Xia), Hadwiger's graph colouring conjecture (2012-2014, with D. Wood), channel assignment in cellular communication systems and optical networks (2005-2008, with V. Mak), and interconnection network routing and graph symmetry (2003-2005), as well as University of Melbourne Research Grant Support Schemes (2015, 2019, 2020). With over 2300 citations on Google Scholar, his key publications include 'Networking for big data: A survey' (IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2016), 'Perfect codes in Cayley graphs' (SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 2018), 'Eigenvalues of Cayley graphs' (2018), 'Hadwiger's conjecture for the complements of Kneser graphs' (Journal of Graph Theory, 2017), and 'Optimal radio labellings of complete m-ary trees' (Discrete Applied Mathematics, 2010). Zhou serves as Editor-in-Chief of Congressus Numerantium, former Co-Editor-in-Chief of Australasian Journal of Combinatorics (2018-2022), and on editorial boards of Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics, Graphs and Combinatorics, Bulletin of the Malaysian Mathematical Sciences Society, and Journal of Interconnection Networks. He was President of the Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia (2017), Vice President (2014-2016), and chaired the organising committee for the 43rd Australasian Combinatorics Conference (2021).