
Professor Mike Jeffrey
M.Sc., Ph.D.(Bristol)
Current positions
Professor of Applied Mathematics
School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
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I describe what I do as “geometrical asymptotics”. I research the fundamental mathematics behind the qualitative features of our world, usually through singular and discontinuous phenomena, particularly in dynamical systems. The mathematics needed to understand how life and technology interact. The reasons why the world is not, and never will be, entirely predictable.
A smooth world would be a boring one. Ours is full of discontinuities and singularities, jumps between different behaviours, kinks where one model or other breaks down.Discontinuities arise from simple things like decision making, or any kind of biological/electronic regulation. They both arise from, and create, singularities. Singularities both arise from, and create, things you wouldn’t expect, with unexpectable outcomes
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Resolving discontinuities in the behaviour of dynamical systems
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Dates
01/03/2016 to 30/06/2018
When Worlds Collide: the asymptotics of interacting systems (Career Acceleration Fellowship)
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Dates
01/08/2012 to 01/08/2016
Thesis supervisions
Routes to Indeterminacy in Nonsmooth Systems
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
02/02/2026Bifurcations and catastrophes of dynamical systems with centre dimension one
Nonlinearity
Perturbation and determinacy of nonsmooth systems
Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena
Classification of Filippov type 3 singular points in planar bimodal piecewise smooth systems
SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems
Elementary catastrophes underlying bifurcations of vector fields and PDEs
Nonlinearity
The hidden sensitivity of non-smooth dynamics
Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena
Thesis
Conical Diffraction: Complexifying Hamilton's Diabolical Legacy
Supervisors
Award date
03/10/2007


