McLaughlin, Richard M

Professor
Chair
Phillips Hall 320
919-962-9816
rmm@email.unc.edu
Website

Research Interests

Experimental, theoretical, and computational fluid dynamics, random phenomena, and stochastic partial differential equations

 

Professional background

B.S Mathematics, the University of Arizona 1989
PhD Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, 1994
Wylie Instructor/NSF Postdoc, University of Utah, 1994-1996
Assistant Professor, University of Utah 1996-1998
Associate Professor, University of North Carolina, 1998-2004
Full Professor, UNC, 2004-present
Chair of Mathematics, 2013-present

 

Research Synopsis

My own work is in fundamental fluid dynamics. I use a blend of asymptotic and stochastic analysis, Monte-Carlo simulation, and experimental methods to uncover interesting fluid phenomena. Roberto Camassa and I built a large-scale modern facility for exploring fundamental fluid dynamics, hosting a 120 foot long modular wave-tank, a tilting wind tunnel, a salt water processing center, as well a huge array of instruments for making scientific measurements. Mathematics manages the facility which we share it with faculty in Marine Sciences, and have joint students and postdocs working in the lab from math, physics, marine sciences, environmental science, computer science, and biology.

Our scientific philosophy is to probe and unearth intriguing fluid phenomena and in turn to develop predictive, first principled, mathematical theory to explain that phenomena. We’ve been fortunate to have made a number of exciting discoveries through this effort, including levitation phenomena in settling particulates in stratified fluids, critical phenomena for the escape/trapping of fluid jets, blocking phenomena in shear flows past fixed bodies, paths of least time in potential flow, discovering how geometry can be used to control asymmetries in solute delivery, and most recently a truly novel self-assembly mechanism by which particles suspended within a stratified fluid attract seemingly to solve jig-saw like puzzles on its way to forming a large scale aggregate disc (this work appeared in Dec 2019 at Nature Communications, where it made its list of the top 50 most read physics papers of 2019).

 

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