Dr Stephen Cowley

Dr Cowley is one of our Bye-Fellows, and is Director of Studies in Mathematics.

Biography

Stephen was born in London, and studied at the University for his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. He was a Research Fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1981 and a Research Fellow & Fulbright Scholar at Northwestern University between 1981 and 1982. He returned to Cambridge as a Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, before moving to Imperial College, London until 1990. He joined the University's Department of Mathematics in October 1990, and was Assistant Lecturer, then Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer. During this time he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in Mathematics at Selwyn College. He became a Bye-Fellow at Emmanuel in 2011 and since then has been our Director of Studies for undergraduate students. 

Teaching

I have taught a range of courses in the Mathematical and Natural Science Triposes, including Vectors & Matrices (Part IA, previously Algebra & Geometry), Methods & Calculus (Part IA, now Vector Calculus), Numerical Analysis (both Part IB and Part II), Waves (Part II), High-Reynolds-Number Flows (Part III), Computational Methods in Fluid Dynamics (Part III), Perturbation Methods (Part III, and in a number guises) and Mathematical Methods (NST Part IB). I was the Director of CATAM from 2008-2014 (for my sins).

Research

My research centres around asymptotic descriptions of high-Reynolds-number (i.e. fast) fluid flows, such as occur in flows past aircraft wings/fuselages, space shuttles, turbine blades, ships, cars and other transport, and as also occur in the larger blood vessels.  Specifically I have been interested in separation/stall, the growth of instabilities leading to turbulence (i.e. transition to turbulence), the validity of the high-Reynolds-number approximation, and vortex-sheet roll-up.