Mathematics
New staff members: the Department welcomes three new lecturers
Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:00:00 BST
The Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce the appointment of three new staff members: Dr Thomas Waters, Dr Maria Pickett, and Dr Murad Banaji. Dr Waters and Dr Banaji join the Nonlinear and Complex Systems Research Group, and Dr Pickett joins in the area of Numerical Analysis.
Dr Thomas Waters was formerly a lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Thomas's research interests are in the field of non-linear dynamical systems, in particular with regards periodic orbits, integrability and chaos. Applications of interest are orbital mechanics, differential geometry and stability. Thomas is also interested in General Relativity and cosmic censorship.
Dr Maria Pickett, formerly a lecturer at the University of Limerick, and more recently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, has research interests are in the area of numerical methods for singularly perturbed differential equations. These equations typically involve a small positive parameter multiplying the highest order derivative; as this parameter takes smaller and smaller values solutions tend to exhibit boundary and/or interior layers. These are narrow regions in which the solution of the differential equation changes very rapidly. Special numerical methods must be employed in order to obtain accurate computed solutions to these problems.
Dr Murad Banaji joins us from a Research Fellowship at the University College, London. After completing a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, in 2001, Murad held postdoctoral positions at University College London and at the University of Essex. Murad's main research interests are in the qualitative theory of nonlinear dynamical systems. He is particularly interested in using combinatorial and analytical techniques to make claims about allowed dynamics in classes of systems based primarily on structural properties of the systems. Such techniques find wide application in biology and chemistry.