The 36th annual Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing (36ACCMCC) was held at UNSW on 10 - 14 December. There were more than 120 participants from more than 20 different countries around the world. Our invited speakers (Ron Aharoni - Technion, Marston Conder - University of Auckland, Daniel Horsley - Monash University, Christine O'Keefe - CSIRO, Chris Rodger - Auburn University, Frank Ruskey - University of Victoria, Carsten Thomassen - Danish Technical University, and Anders Yeo - University of Johannesburg) all gave wonderful talks; the parallel sessions contained lots of great contributed talks too.

Combinatorics is the study of discrete structures such as graphs, designs and latin squares.

These structures arise naturally in many applications, including physics, biology, cryptography and computer science. Australia has a long history of world-leading combinatorics research, and the ACCMCC conference series dates back to 1972. 36ACCMCC was the first conference in this series to be hosted at UNSW.

The organisers received a lot of positive feedback about the conference. Delegates enjoyed both the excellent scientific programme and the social events. Early in the week, the Sydney weather did not match up to expectations created by the blue-sky image of Coogee Beach from the 36ACCMCC website. But the rain cleared up in time for the conference excursion to the Royal National Park and Symbio Wildlife Park on Wednesday afternoon. Delegates had another chance to view the ocean during pre-dinner drinks at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Coogee Beach, where the conference dinner took place.

More information about 36ACCMCC is available from the 36ACCMCC website.