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Dr. David Yost

Adjunct Associate Professor

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Campus

Mt Helen Campus

Biography

Dr David Yost is an adjunct associate professor in mathematics. He has taught a wide variety of courses, from first year to postgraduate level, delivered in English, German and Italian, for students of mathematics, education, computer science, physics and engineering. He enjoyed encouraging students to see the relevance of mathematics in their everyday experience.  

Before joining the University of Ballarat, later Federation University, David worked full-time at La Trobe University, the Australian National University, the Free University of Berlin, the University of Extremadura, and King Saud University. He also held sessional or visiting positions at several other institutions. 

David’s research for many years was focused on functional analysis. Since formally retiring in 2021, he has remained research active, mainly in convex and discrete geometry, in collaboration with former colleagues and students from Federation University.  

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More about David

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Science, Melbourne University  
  • Master of Science, Australian National University  
  • Doctor of Philosophy, Edinburgh University

Areas of interest

  • Functional analysis 
  • Discrete and convex geometry 
  • Optimisation 

Grants

  • Yost, D. Sept–Oct 2025. ‘f-vectors, lower bound theorems and decomposability of polytopes', Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (8,700 euros)

Past

  • PhD student, Federation University, ‘f-vectors and decomposability of polytopes’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, Federation University, ‘Transversality, regularity and error bounds in variational analysis and optimisation’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, Federation University, ‘Extremality and Stationarity of Collections of Sets: Metric, Slope and Normal Cone Characterisations’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, Federation University, ‘Reliability-Based Design Optimisation Methods in Large Scale Systems’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, Federation University, ‘Hyperbolic smoothing in nonsmooth optimization and applications’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, University of Ballarat, ‘Aggregate subgradient smoothing methods for large scale nonsmooth nonconvex optimisation and applications’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, University of Ballarat, ‘Longitudinal Data Modelling Using Penalized Splines and Ranked Set Sampling’, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, University of Ballarat, ‘G-coupling functions and Properties of Strongly Star-Shaped cones’, supervisor.   
  • Master's student, University of Ballarat, ‘Complemented and uncomplemented subspaces of Banach Spaces and Banach algebras’, supervisor.
  • Honours student, University of Ballarat, ‘Reducible and Irreducible Convex sets, supervisor.   
  • PhD student, King Saud University, ‘Quasi-linear maps between Banach spaces and their applications’, supervisor.   
  • Master's student, King Saud University, ‘Separable Quotients of Banach Spaces and some related problems’, supervisor.   

  • Mathematics 
  • Statistics  

Specialist roles

  • Deputy Head of School, Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, 2007–2009  
  • Acting Director, Centre for Informatics and Applied Optimization, 2010–2011  
  • Director, Australian Mathematical Society Annual Conference (Ballarat) 2012 
  • Esquire Bedell (master of ceremonies at graduations), 2014–2021 

Professional association memberships

  • Australian Mathematical Society (member since 1983, council member since 2013)  

Centre for Smart Analytics' 'Computational and Intelligent Mathematics' stream

David is part of the Centre for Smart Analytics (CSA) 'Computational and Intelligent Mathematics' stream, which applies optimisation methods and approaches to model and solve real-world problems in machine learning, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics and finance.
  • Publications

Lower bound results for conditionally decomposable polytopes