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Curriculum Vitae

Addresses

electronic: d.vella(at)damtp.cam.ac.uk

college: E1 Angel Court, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, UK

department: H1.01 DAMTP, CMS, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge, CB3 0WA, UK

Current Positions

Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge

Ernest Oppenheimer Early Career Research Fellow at DAMTP, University of Cambridge

Previous Employment

Oct. 2007-Sep. 2009

Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow at LPS de l'ENS and PMMH, ESPCI, Paris.

Oct. 2007-Mar. 2008

Chercheur Associé in the Laboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'École Normale Supérieure, Paris

Education

2004-2007

Doctor of Philosophy

Trinity College and Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge, supervised by Herbert Huppert, FRS.

Thesis title: "The Fluid Mechanics of Floating and Sinking"

2003-2004

Special Student in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS), Harvard University, supervised by L. Mahadevan.

Supported by the Harvard Club of New York via the Joseph Hodges Choate Memorial Fellowship.

2002-2003

Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) with Distinction

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

1999 - 2002

Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Mathematics (First Class in all three years)

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

1994 - 1999

Aylesbury Grammar School, Buckinghamshire

2 STEP, 1 S Level, 5 A Levels, 1 AS Level, 11 GCSEs

Research Interests

Surface Tension Phenomena, Continuum Mechanics, Adhesion, Flow in Porous Media. See my research page for further details.

Publications

See Publications

Seminars and Conference Presentations

See Seminars and Conference Presentations

Awards and Prizes

• Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Fellowship for attendance at GFD Program summer 2006 (awarded by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)


• Smith-Knight Prize for extended essay describing my research. Placed in first of five groups (awarded by University of Cambridge)


• SIAM Prize for best student talk at the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium 2005


• Joseph Hodges Choate Memorial Fellowship for study at Harvard University (awarded by University of Cambridge)


• Heilbronn Mathematics Prize for examination results (Trinity College, Cambridge)


• Rouse-Ball Mathematical Essay Prize, Yeats Mathematical Essay Prize and Science Essay Prize for essays on a variety of subjects (awarded by Trinity College, Cambridge)

Teaching Experience

Lecturing

In Michaelmas 2009 I gave nine lectures in the course Slow Viscous Flows (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos). These lectures covered thin layer flows (lubrication theory and extensional flows) as well as the mechanics of thin elastic objects embedded within a viscous flow.

Small Group Teaching

Mathematical Tripos IA: Revision supervisions for Vectors & Matrices and Dynamics & Relativity
Mathematical Tripos IB: Fluid Dynamics, Methods and Variational Principles
Mathematical Tripos II: Fluid Dynamics
Natural Sciences Tripos IA: Quantitative Biology and Elementary Mathematics for Biologists
Natural Sciences Tripos IB: Mathematical Methods

Other Academic Activities

Admissions Interviews

I have interviewed applicants for undergraduate admission to read Mathematics at Trinity College for the past four years.

Conference Session Chair

Elasticity and Geometry of Thin Objects I, APS March Meeting 2009: Pittsburgh PA, 16/03/2009

Peer Review

I have refereed articles for a number of journals, as well as conferences, including:

ChemPhysChem, EPL, Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Langmuir, Physical Review Letters, Physics of Fluids, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and Soft Matter

Seminar Organizing

I am currently part of the committee that organizes the Friday Fluids seminars in DAMTP

Examining

First year examiner for of P. L. H. M. Cooray (Cavendish Laboratory)
Fourth term interviewer of M. J. Golding (DAMTP)

Language and IT Skills

Good French and Conversational German

MS Office, Mac OS X, Programming in Pascal, Fortran 77, Mathematica, MatLab, LaTeX, HTML as well as basic competency with software used with high speed and other digital video cameras.

Other Interests

Charities

I am currently the treasurer of Trinity in Camberwell as well as a trustee of Cambridge University's Catholic Association.

Music

I enjoy music in many different guises: playing (Trombone) and listening as well as studying the theory of music. In this vein, I have acquired some qualifications in music:

Associate of Musical Theory, Criticism and Literature (AMusTCL) Trinity College, London
ABRSM Grade 8 Theory of Music
ABRSM Grade 8 Trombone

I have twice performed solo concerti and played with a wide range of ensembles ranging from brass and jazz bands to symphony orchestras. Highlights include reaching the Regional Finals of the Festival of Music for Youth, concerts at St. John's, Smith Square (with Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra) and a tour to Vienna, Austria including a performance outside Schoenbrunn Palace (with Cambridge University Musical Society).

Sport

I enjoy a number of sports and have been known to play for the Trinity College (Cambridge) Second XI football team as well as for the Winthrop House (Harvard) Intramural Softball team. More recently, I was involved in the Trinity Fellows Cricket Team's unbeaten 2007 season scoring 9, 8, 8 and then 45... a salutary lesson in the relative benefits of the mean, median and mode in assessing an individual's sporting prowess.

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