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Professor Mathew Wells
Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences
Email address: m.wells@utoronto.ca
Twitter: @EFD_Toronto , @WaterPathways
My research group aims to quantify the mixing in environmental flows, particularly those in large lakes and the coastal ocean where stratification and the Earth’s rotation play a dominant role in the dynamics. We are particularly interested in how physical processes in lakes structure biological processes such as fish habitat usage and winter dynamics of oxygen in frozen lakes.
We study such mixing and dispersion in both the field studies and through laboratory studies.
Togethor with Cosima Porteus, I lead WATER PATHWAYS Research Cluster. This cluster funded by the UTSC CSPP program, and is focused on how to best optimize the urban ecosystem services of the Great Lakes that control our water security, affect fish habitat, influence transportation, and allow for recreation. Our goal is to understand the transport and fate of nutrients, pollution, sediments and biology between rivers and near-shore zones of the Great Lakes.
Currently our main areas of research are in the study of turbidity currents, density currents , double diffusive convection, sediment laden convection, rotating turbulence, Coriolis effects, biological fluid coupling, dispersion in environmental flows, dynamics of internal seiches, surface seiches and under-ice processes in the Great lakes.
Brief CV
2021 -present, Professor, University of Toronto.
2011 – 2021, Associate Professor, University of Toronto.
2006 – 2011, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto.
2003 – 2005 Research Associate, Department of Geology, Yale University
2001 – 2002 Post Doctoral Fellow, Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Applied Physics,
Eindhoven Technical University, The Netherlands
1997 – 2001 PhD in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Research School of Earth Sciences,
Australian National University
1993 – 1996 Bachelor of Science – First Class Honours
Australian National University
Awards
2011 Early Researcher Award – Ontario Ministry of Innovation
2011 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement
2016 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement