Matthew Harris, PhD
Bachelor of Science in Pre-doctoral Mathematics
Class Year: 2013
PhD Applied Mathematics, focus on Fluid Mechanics
After finishing my PhD in 2020 I taught a variety of courses for the Mathematics and ECE departments in topics including linear algebra, vector calculus, ODEs, PDEs, Fourier series, and mathematical logic. Currently, I teach pure mathematics courses for the ECE department at the University of Waterloo.
The focus of the courses I have been teaching for the last year is the foundations of mathematics and their applications to computer science. Applied topics include the Halting problem, Godel's incompleteness theorems, and computability.
In addition to my current teaching duties, I am also working on two research projects. The first project is an extension of my PhD work on inertial instabilities of geophysical flows. The goal of this research is to further explore the mixing that is induced by the nonlinear saturation of these instabilities and to quantify their potential effect on the overall energetic budget of the ocean.
My second project is joint work to develop a better mathematical model for Dendron. The goal of this project is to use the improved model to better understand the role that calcium has in inducing and regulating action potentials.