The Australian Research Council (ARC) has established Centres of Excellence to maintain and develop Australia's research output in four designated areas, Nano-Materials and Bio-Materials, Genome/Phenome Research, Complex/Intelligent Systems, and Photon Science and Technology. These Centres are also expected to generate economic, social and cultural benefits for Australia.

A proposal to establish an ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems has been successful in obtaining funding from the ARC. The Centre comprises 13 Chief Investigators from The University of Melbourne, Australian National University, The University of New South Wales, The University of Queensland and La Trobe University, all of whom have international reputations for their research in mathematics and statistics.

The Centre's mission will be to stimulate research activity in mathematical and statistical modeling of complex systems. In doing so, the Centre will conduct research on criticality and phase change (e.g. in control of traffic queuing, and understanding catastrophic failure), Monte Carlo methods (e.g. in modeling financial systems), statistical modeling (e.g. in understanding telephone and internet traffic), dynamic systems (e.g. in meteorology, oceanography, and the behaviour of polymers and composite materials), risk modeling (e.g. in insurance, national security and health interventions), and advanced computation (e.g. to speed industrial design and to predict large-scale, long-term environmental impacts).

The Centre will also reinforce the importance of mathematics and statistics across the spectrum of Australia's scientific and technological development. To achieve this, the Centre will maintain an extensive and vigorous outreach program, encompassing schools, commerce and industry, and the broader research community in Australia.