Dr Joel Phillips, PhD

Room 602
Tel:- 020-7679-2831/2840
E-mail:- phillipsmath.ucl.ac.uk
Fax: 020-7383-5519

Research Interests
Numerical Analysis, Scientific Computing and Mathematical Sociology

Together with Dr Timo Betcke and his PhD students, I am working on the development of novel numerical techniques for the solution of time-harmonic wave problems. These problems arise in many real world situations, such as acoustic design, medical imaging, oil exploration and radar propagation. As the frequency of the waves being modelled increases, the computational effort required to produce numerical approximations to these problems increases a lot. The techniques that we are investigating have the potential to significantly reduce this effort. We are also developing software that allows us to implement these techniques on high performance computing architectures and I have a particular interest in the development of abstraction layers that allow scientific software to easily (and transparently) take advantage of these architectures.

My other research includes the development of compatible finite element discretisations, in particular on non-standard reference elements like pyramids. This allows greater flexibility in the building of high order finite element methods to find numerical approximations to a wide class of partial differential equations, including those arising in electro-magnetics and elasticity.

In a somewhat different direction, I am interested in using mathematical modelling to capture the dynamics of sociological and, in particular, political phenomena. Can we model the growth of political parties? What electoral systems make for better governmental decision making?

This page was last modified on May 20, 2011 by Helen Higgins