Dr. Robert J. Whittaker
Dr. Robert J. WhittakerI am a lecturer in applied mathematics, working in the School of Mathematics at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.
From 2007-2010 I worked at the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (OCIAM), first as a postdoc (working with Sarah Waters) and later as a lecturer. During the same period, I was also a Junior Research Fellow at St. Catherine's College in the University of Oxford.
Previously I spent a year as a research fellow at the Centre for Mathematical Medicine and Biology at the University of Nottingham, also working with Sarah Waters. Before that, I was a PhD student in DAMTP at the University of Cambridge, supervised by John Lister.
You may be interested in my text file of Linux and LaTeX tips. I've also written a few LaTeX packages, which contain various useful commands and macros.
My EPSRC-funded postdoctoral work with Sarah Waters involved doing asymptotic analysis of time-dependent 3D flows in collapsible elastic tubes (think blood flow). Related numerical work, as part of the same project, is being done by Matthias Heil at the University of Manchester. For further details see my collapsible tubes page.
As a result of the study-group problem Optimisation of fluid distribution inside a porous construct, I have done some work modelling the fluid flow and nutrient transport inside tissue engineering bioreactors. I also have a more recent interest in flow in curved tubes, and have co-supervised a summer student looking theoretically at how ultra-sound measurements can be used to estimate flow rates in vivo.
For my PhD I looked at various problems of highly viscous thermal convection, with a view to better understanding some of the processes which occur inside the earth. My dissertation was entitled Theoretical Solutions for Convective Flows in Geophysically Motivated Regimes.
Specific PhD projects will be advertised on the UEA website, but if you are interested in doing a PhD or MMath project in any of these areas then please get in touch. I would be happy to discuss things further with any interested students.
Full list of publications, presentations, etc. …
r.whittaker@(nospam)uea.ac.ukhttp://robert.mathmos.net/