My personal webpage can be found here.

Contact: sarah.selkirk@warwick.ac.uk

Profile:

I am a Research Fellow in Dmitry Chistikov's EPSRC grant "Two-way automata: limitations and frontiers".

My research interests are:

• Enumerative Combinatorics, in particular finding bijections and using computers to guess counting formulas;
• Analytic Combinatorics, in particular using generating functions to study lattice paths and sometimes trees;
• Formal Language Theory and Automata Theory, which I am currently learning more about. I am currently looking into problems involving two-way automata. Tying into above interests, I am also interested in gaining better understanding of the nature of generating functions (rational, algebraic, differentiably finite, etc) via language theoretic methods.

My professional interests not directly related to research are:

• Reducing and removing barriers to participation of women in mathematics and computer science;
• Increasing participation of researchers from the global South (particularly Africa, since I am South African) in the international research community.

Upcoming events:

CIMPA School, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 6-17 January 2025: Enumerative combinatorics with applications to computer science. [Organiser, Lecturer]

CIRM Thematic Month: Singularities, Differential Equations, and Transcendence, France, 24-28 February 2025: Enumerative combinatorics and effective aspects of differential equations. [Speaker]

Recent research:

1. Andrei Asinowski, Daniel Brosch, and Sarah J. Selkirk, Directed lattice paths with dynamic boundary, submitted, 2024+.
2. Alex S. A. Alochukwu, Audace A. V. Dossou-Olory, Fadekemi J. Osaye, Valisoa R. M. Rakotonarivo, Shashank Ravichandran, Sarah J. Selkirk, Hua Wang, and Hays Whitlatch, Characterization of Trees with Maximum Security, submitted, 2024+. Part of the MRC: Trees in Many Contexts event.
3. Clemens Heuberger, Sarah J. Selkirk, and Stephan Wagner, The distribution of the maximum protection number in simply generated trees. Combin. Probab. Comput., vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 518-553, 2024.
4. Andrei Asinowski, Cyril Banderier, and Sarah J. Selkirk, From Kreweras to Gessel: A walk through patterns in the quarter plane, Sem. Lothar. Combin., vol. 89B. 2023
5. Clemens Heuberger, Sarah J. Selkirk, and Stephan Wagner, Enumeration of Generalized Dyck Paths Based on the Height of Down-Steps Modulo k, Electron. J. Combin., vol. 30, no. 1, pp. Paper No. 1.26, 2023.

Academic Service Roles:

European Mathematical Society - Committee for Developing Countries.

DCS Welfare and Communications Committee.

South African Mathematical Society Women in Mathematics Subdivision.