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The Institute of Fundamental Sciences (IFS) is an academic unit embracing the four disciplines of chemistry, mathematics, physics and statistics. Each has its own distinctive identity within the Institute. Interdisciplinary teaching is encouraged and promoted through programmes drawing upon expertise as appropriate and required from the individual disciplines. The nanoscience major for example, draws upon chemists and physicists, as well as colleagues from other Institutes.

The fundamental sciences of necessity underpin all scientific endeavour, but more significant is the increasingly important role of these sciences as cutting edges at the forefront of science. Research within the Institute is exemplified by the latest publications.
(See Latest 5 list in right column and below.)

Another characterisation of planar graphs   A new characterisation of planar graphs is presented. It concerns the structure of the cocycle space of a graph, and is motivated by consideration of the dual of an elementary property enjoyed by sets of circuits in any graph.

The Nature of the Phosphazene Nitrogen-Metal Bond: DFT Calculations on 2(Pyridyloxy)cyclophosphazene Complexes   DFT calculations show that the phosphazene ring nitrogen acts as a donor towards divalent transition metal ions. The lengthening of the PN bonds flanking the metal coordination site can be explained as a result of electron density that is transferred from ring PN bonding orbitals to the 4s orbital of the metal ion rather than a decrease in the extent of -bonding as suggested by earlier models.

A Fast and Simple Algorithm for Finding the Modes of a Multinomial Distribution.    Given a multi-variate probability distribution, we describe the first efficient algorithm to find, for a given sample size, the combination to each category which maximises the probability of drawing that sample.

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