Research Interests
My research centres on mathematical and computational modelling of subsurface solute transport, and in particular on how this is impacted by unresolved heterogeneity. The subsurface is an information-poor environment, and solute transport behaviour may be affected by heterogeneity at scales too small to measure and/or model on a computer. Naturally, this confounds one of the goals of hydrogeologists: making predictions. With this motivation, I seek to develop closure models to average away unresolved heterogeneity, to calibrate predictive models using macroscopic observables, and to develop error envelopes for hydrogeological predictions. Related to these overarching themes, specific areas of interest include transport behavior of reacting solutes in heterogeneous flow fields, analysis of the effect of model (as opposed to measurement) error on predictive accuracy, stochastic (especially random walk) methods, multiphase systems, and scientific computing.

Current scientific computing efforts include (i) development of the Aurora package, which allows for the anomalous transport modelling approaches developed in the academic world to be used in concert with the complex, large-scale MODFLOW models employed by practitioners, (ii) development GPU-based particle tracking codes using CUDA, and (iii) development of adjoint state code in FEniCS for exploration of error envelopes.

B.Sc. 2004 Queen’s University, Canada, Mathematics and Engineering. First class honours.

M.Sc. 2007 University of Toronto, Canada, Department of Mathematics.

Ph.D. 2012 Queen’s University, Canada, Department of Civil Engineering.