Theodore Drivas
Stony Brook University, NY·Mathematics & Statistics·Early-career
Ocean currents, large weather patterns and planetary atmospheres are much wider than they are deep, so they behave approximately like two-dimensional fluids. Understanding how such fluids evolve over long times is basic to weather prediction, climate science and astrophysics.
- Fields
Mathematics & Statistics
Physics
- Topics
fluid dynamics
two-dimensional fluids
Navier-Stokes equations
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Analyze the long-time behavior of the two-dimensional Euler equations to explain how ideal fluids form lasting, hurricane-like vortices through vortex merging and mixing.
- Study the forced two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations with weak viscosity and forcing to understand the turbulent cascade predicted by Kolmogorov's conjectures.
- Compare the regimes of long time and weak dissipation taken in different orders of limits, using partial differential equations, geometry and dynamical systems.
- Use computer experiments of two-dimensional flows to guide rigorous mathematical analysis and pose new questions about solutions near and far from equilibrium.
More about the research
A puzzling feature is that the same kind of fluid can drift toward order or toward disorder depending on the regime.
Why it matters
Rigorous understanding of how two-dimensional fluids organize into large vortices or break into turbulence adds to the mathematical foundations underlying models of oceans, weather, climate and planetary atmospheres, and could eventually inform how such models are built and interpreted.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Camillo De Lellis
Princeton University, NJ·Mathematics & Statistics
Prove the existence of Navier-Stokes solutions whose kinetic energy dissipation stays positive as viscosity goes to zero, without adding spurious oscillations to the initial data, giving rigorous examples of anomalous dissipation.
Zachary Bradshaw
University of Arkansas, AR·Mathematics & Statistics
Analyze the dynamic stability of multi-celled vortex solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations, such as tornado-like models with an updraft surrounding a central downdraft.
Mimi Dai
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Mathematics & Statistics
Construct weak solutions of fluid equations with unphysical properties, such as loss of energy balance, non-uniqueness or singularity formation, using convex integration to show limits of the weak-solution notion.
The school
Stony Brook University: 32 labs on PI Pages, $319M a year on research, 289 research doctorates a year.
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