Professor Ian Davies

Professor Emeritus (Science), Science and Engineering

Email address

About

I took my early education in Forres and headed south to Heriot-Watt University for my BSc and PhD studies, completing my PhD in the summer of 1982. During this period in Edinburgh I married but also pandered to my interests in running, racquet sports and audio-visual work.

I headed south (again) to take up a postdoctoral position in the Department of Mathematics (University College Swansea as it was then). A fixed term lectureship followed and this led on to a permanent position in 1988. My duties had the usual profile early on.

Teaching duties leaned towards applied mathematics, probability and mathematical physics and that broad flavour has persisted with only the addition of numerical mathematics. I have supervised research students and many taught masters students over the years.

Research was initially focussed on functional integration and applications with special interest in asymptotic expansions, a recurrent theme in my work. Ventures into many-body dynamics, stochastic mechanics, stochastic differential equations and latterly stochastic partial differential equations followed. There have been a number of collaborations with colleagues in other subject areas (bioscience and engineering mainly) resulting in published works. One recurrent theme has been my involvement in the running of international conferences and (smaller) workshops. Consequently, I have edited five volumes of conference proceedings. Tied to this activity has been a successful record in securing funding. Furthermore, I have been involved large bids to research councils and, notably, was PI for an institutional bid.

Administration, of varying types and levels, has always played a large part in my work. There used to be a considerable support of TeX and Macintosh computers (hardware, firmware, netware, software & wetware). I served as Deputy Head of the College of Science from October 2014 till the end of July 2019.

I hold memberships of the AMS, IMA and SIAM.

Ian M Davies, B.Sc. Ph.D. C.Math. FIMA SFHEA

Areas Of Expertise

  • Functional Integration
  • Asymptotics
  • Stochastic Analysis

Career Highlights

Teaching Interests

My teaching encompasses a fairly broad spectrum; classical analysis, probability, statistics, mechanics (all flavours), numerical analysis, and computation (supported by a variety of programming languages).  During my time I have taught at all levels (3 through to 7) and supervised many students whilst they worked on their projects, dissertations or theses.

Research