Shaun Ceci, Ph.D.

As a mathematician, my research involves the use of a combination of techniques pulled from both applied and pure branches of mathematics to explore problems in fluid dynamics. Central to the study of fluid dynamics are the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) — which govern the motion of fluids under quite general conditions and are used to model everything from the air flow around an airplane’s wing to the movement of stars inside galaxies. Despite being essentially the simplest equations which describe the motion of a fluid, the NSE are fundamentally difficult to study from a mathematical perspective. This is evidenced by the long-standing open question, now a Clay Millennium Prize problem (where substantial progress towards a solution is worth a million dollars), of global existence and smoothness for solutions of the NSE in three-dimensional space.