Research and teaching in Applied Maths
About
This website documents my time in academia (from 2013-2021-ish!). Until the end of 2020, I was employed at the School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, as a postdoctoral research fellow, funded by DARE (0.5FTE, August 2018 - Dec. 2020) and working on aspects of flood modelling and mitigation. From January 2018 to August 2020, I was also a teaching assistant (0.5FTE) here. Previously, I completed a PhD and held a short postdoctoral research position (2013-17), working with Onno Bokhove, Steve Tobias and the Met Office, before taking some time out for half a year travelling around the UK, Europe, and NZ.
Before arriving in Leeds, I completed degrees at the Universities of Bristol (BSc Maths; 2007-2011) and Birmingham (MSc Meteorology; 2011/12) with a couple of spells in Germany (Dresden for Erasmus in 2009/10 and Kiel for some post-MSc research in 2012).
For more info, have a look at the pages linked on the left, and below for research interests and activities...
Research
My research interests concern the mathematical and statistical modelling of atmospheric and environmental phenomena, including (but not limited to!):
- > geophysical fluid dynamics,
- > hydraulic and shallow water-type modelling,
- > numerical methods for (conservative and non-conservative) hyperbolic problems,
- > data assimilation (Kalman filtering),
- > numerical weather prediction,
- > flood modelling and mitigation,
- > climate downscaling and bias correction.
News and events
18 Dec. 2020: An article (preprint) published on EarthArXiv: 'Idealized forecast-assimilation experiments for convective-scale Numerical Weather Prediction'. Thanks to all co-authors for their contributions!
28 Oct. 2020: presenting at the Fluids ECR webinar. Title: Mathematical and numerical modelling of the Wetropolis flood and rainfall demonstrator. Slides available here.
23 Sept. 2020: DARE blog post summarising our submission to DEFRA's flooding inquiry.
15 Sept. 2020: introducing the new Flood-Excess-Volume github site: several case studies including source code and output. See each river's repository for more info.
2 Sept. 2020: written evidence submitted to the UK Gov's DEFRA flooding inquiry.
August 2020: GitHub updated with three new repos, incl. documentation and source code, on (i) Wetropolis modelling, (ii) well-balanced shallow-water flows, and (iii) some old work on the shallow-water Riemann problem.
1 August 2020: DARE pilot project 'Wetropolis rainfall and flood demonstrator: real-time simulations with data assimilation' starts, til Dec. 2020.
11-12 June 2020: 'Flood modelling and forecasting challenges in industry' workshop, University of Sheffield. Invited keynote and Wetropolis showcase. [CANCELLED due to Covid-19.]
5 June 2020: A short article (preprint) published on arXiv:2006.03370: 'Ensuring well-balanced shallow water flows via a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method: issues at lowest order'. Original manuscript rejected by JCP (as a short research note).
14 May 2020: 'Wetropolis extreme rainfall and flood demonstrator: from mathematical design to outreach', published by HESS (Education and communication). Subsequently selected as a highlight article -- well done everyone!
31 March 2020: Some news items on our recently published work, from the university and the Yorkshire Post.
28 Feb. 2020: 'A Cost-Effectiveness Protocol for Flood-Mitigation Plans Based on Leeds’ Boxing Day 2015 Floods', published by Water.
20 Feb. 2020: Nominated for a Leeds Partnership award for teaching -- I don't know the details but thanks to whoever made the nomination!
21 Jan. 2020: DARE blog post summarising some of our recent work.
29 Aug. 2019: 'Communicating (nature‐based) flood‐mitigation schemes using flood‐excess volume', published by River Research and Applications. Online: https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3507.
27 May 2019: 'Wetropolis... from mathematical design to outreach and research', published online as a HESS discussion paper. See also corresponding GitHub site.
16-17 May 2019: We are hosting a workshop in Leeds, focussing on idealised models of (convective-scale) Numerical Weather Prediction and their use in data assimilation research. Thanks to the School of Maths at Leeds and the London Mathematical Society for providing funds.
7-12 April 2019: EGU general assembly, Vienna. One talk on DA (slides available), another on FEV (slides available -- presented by OB), and a Wetropolis poster.
11 March 2019: 'Wetropolis extreme rainfall and flood demonstrator: from mathematical design to outreach and research'. Preprint on EarthArXiv.
17 Dec. 2018: DARE project board meeting, University of Reading.
27 Sept. 2018: water@leeds annual Confluence 2018 showcasing water-related research at the University of Leeds, including lightning talk (3 mins!) on Flood-excess volume (or how Wetropolis inspired a new tool for flood-mitigation assessment).
27 Sept. 2018: Data Assimilation for the REsilient city (DARE) blog published - an accessible overview on using ‘flood-excess volume’ to quantify and communicate flood mitigation schemes.
17-19 Sept. 2018: Leeds-Kyoto International Symposium: Advanced Engineering for Natural Disaster Identification, Mitigation, Prevention, and Response. Group session: 'Interdisciplinary approach to mitigate/prevent water-related disasters', with short presentation. See also poster presentation, prepared for 'Evidence-Based Decisions for UK Landscapes' in Cambridge.
Aug. 2018: official start as a research fellow (0.5FTE), funded through the DARE project, focussing on aspects of flood modelling and dynamic control strategies.
15 June 2018: Yorkshire iCASP Confluence 2018 at Brewery Wharf in Leeds, with Wetropolis in action.
8-10 Jan. 2018: Maths Foresees: mitigating severe environmental events. Final general assembly, University of Leeds.
Jan. 2018: return to Leeds as a teaching assistant (0.5FTE) in the School of Maths.
June - Dec. 2017: seven months on the road in the UK, Europe, and NZ.
July 2017: Paper accepted for publication in Tellus A: Dynamical Meteorology and Oceanography.
31 May 2017: GitHub page: an idealised convective-scale forecast-assimilation framework. Source code is live and working... use with care, comments welcome, and more updates expected in the future!
16 May 2017: PhD thesis, 'An idealised fluid model of Numerical Weather Prediction: dynamics and data assimilation', published online here.
3-6 April 2017: Environmental Modelling in Industry Study Group at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge. Organised by Maths Foresees. I provided a 'live' report from the event.
20-24 March 2017: research visit to Sebastian Reich's group at the Mathematics Institute, University of Potsdam. Invited seminar here and at the FU Berlin - slides available.
3 March 2017: viva passed!
28 Jan. 2017: Flood recovery and resilience conference, Bilsborrow (near Preston; organised by the Churchtown Flood Action Group). Wetropolis talk and demonstration.
6 Jan. 2017: 'Dynamics of Rotating Fluids' meeting, UCL.
21 Dec. 2016: thesis submitted!!
14 Nov. 2016: Wetropolis all-day demonstration in School of Maths.
3-11 Nov. 2016: research visit to the Met Office, including invited 'Weather Science' seminar.
2 Nov. 2016: Invited seminar at DARC, University of Reading.
5-7 Sept. 2016: Maths Foresees general assembly, Edinburgh. Wetropolis makes its debut (accompanying presentation).
18-22 July 2016: 'International Symposium on Data Assimilation' at the University of Reading. Abstract accepted for poster.
8 May 2016: 'The Science of Floods', Hebden Bridge. Public event organised by Pennine Prospects and contribution from Maths Foresees.
January/February 2016: 3 week visit to the 'Data Assimilation and Ensembles' group at the Met Office. Presented latest work in the 'Data Assimilation Methods' group science meeting.
Oct.-Dec. 2015: Broken ankle!
1-5 June 2015: 'Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis and Data Assimilation in Meteorology and Oceanography' (a.k.a. '10th Adjoint Workshop'), West Virginia, USA.
18-20 May 2015: 'Maths Foresees': mitigating severe environmental events. First general assembly, University of Leeds.
12-17 April 2015: EGU General Assembly, Vienna, Austria. Abstract pdf here
5 March 2015: Fluids seminar, Applied Maths, Leeds.
January/February 2015: 3 week visit to the 'Data Assimilation and Ensembles' group at the Met Office. Including 'Met Office Academic Partnership' poster session on 12th February.
15-19 September 2014: Summer school on 'Data Assimilation in environmental sciences' at the University of Reading.
Sept. 2014: Paper published in Journal of Climate.
August/September 2014: 3 week visit to the 'Data Assimilation and Ensembles' group at the Met Office.
14-18 July 2014: CliMathNet conference 2014. Program here.
12-14 May 2014: Reading-Warwick Data Assimilation meeting, University of Warwick. Program here.
30 April 2014: Applied PG Seminar, School of Maths, Leeds. Title: 'Data Assimilation and Numerical Weather Prediction.'
24-28 Feb. 2014: 'International Symposium on Data Assimilation' at LMU, Munich. Here is my poster.
2-6 December 2013: Partial Differential Equations and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics workshop, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge. Program here.