Research students

On this page, you will find a list of both my current and previous doctoral students, alongside a short discussion of their research. If you'd like to find out more, you can take a look at the publications page or drop me an email.

Current students

I currently supervise one doctoral student:

Beth Eames, University of Oxford (2022-present)

Co-supervisors: Prof. David Hills (Oxford)

Beth is investigating large scale contact problems - problems where two solid bodies are in contact and the applied loads may lead to local wear and fatigue. Applications include dovetail joints in turbine blades or in oil well risers. These tend to be challenging problems both mathematically and in the laboratory / real-world, so Beth's research looks at approximate or asymptotic approaches to understanding the behaviour of these problems, so that simpler models that are easier to study can be used as a proxy to a real setting.

Previous students

The following are students who have survived being supervised by me and have graduated:

Dr Matthew Shirley, University of Oxford (2019-2023)

Material flow in a silicon furnace

Co-supervisors: Prof. Colin Please & Prof. Jim Oliver (Oxford)

Matthew worked on a project on the InFoMM CDT in collaboration with Elkem, who extract silicon from ores (mostly quartz). Matthew's research looked into the flow of gas and quartz within the furnace, seeking to understand how heat transfers in the furnace and where the majority of silicon forms. One of the main goals was to understand how and why gas 'channels' might form in the furnace and what impact that has on silicon production.

Matthew is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, extensively engaged in industrial collaboration.

A schematic showing channels in a silicon furnace.

Dr Michael Negus, University of Oxford (2018-2022)

Modelling droplet impact in fluid-structure interaction problems

Co-supervisors: Prof. Jim Oliver (Oxford) and Dr Radu Cimpeanu (Warwick)

Michael's project looked at impact dynamics involving compliant substrates. Although motivated by small-scale phenomena such as impact of rain droplets onto leaves, the mathematics is applicable at much larger scales, including wave impact onto flexible materials. Michael pursued a hybrid asymptotic-numerical approach and is an expert in Wagner theory - the mathematical theory of how liquids 'splash' - and in using direct numerical simulations, particularly Basilisk.

Michael is now CTO at Vanellus (https://vanellus.tech/), putting his expertise in computational fluid dynamics to good use!

Streamlines and pressure in the jet root region of a droplet impact. The colour represents the fluid pressure, and is significantly higher near the stagnation point of the flow. The streamlines come from the top of the image and either turn over into a splash jet to the right, or turn back into the droplet bulk to the left of the image.

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