Rate My Professor Duncan Sutherland

Dr Duncan Sutherland is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Science at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales, where he holds the positions of Mathematics Stream Coordinator and Deputy Director of UNSW Bushfire. He earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Sydney in 2014. Following his doctorate, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow at Victoria University Melbourne, focusing on physics-based simulations of bushfires. Sutherland joined UNSW Canberra in 2014, advanced to Senior Lecturer in 2022, was appointed Deputy Director of UNSW Bushfire in 2023, and became Mathematics Discipline Coordinator in 2024. He teaches undergraduate courses including ZPEM1304 Engineering Mathematics 1B and ZPEM3306 Waves and Fluids, and supervises PhD students on computational fluid dynamics simulations of bushfires.

Sutherland's research applies computational fluid dynamics to bushfire phenomena, covering buoyancy-driven flows, entrainment and mixing, particle transport, contaminant modelling, and combustion modelling, with a current emphasis on ember storms at the Wildland-Urban Interface. He has led or contributed to major grants, such as the ARC Discovery Project 'Gravity Current Driven Smoke Dispersion In a Stratified Ambient' ($250,000, 2021-2024), 'Understanding the Origin and Development of Extreme and Mega Bushfires' ($590,000, 2021-2024), and the Black Summer Recovery Grant 'Enhancing resilience to ember attack on the urban fringe' ($804,000, 2022-2024). Notable publications include 'Physics-based modelling of wind-driven junction fires' (Fire Safety Journal, 2024), 'Numerical simulation of two parallel merging wildfires' (International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2023), 'Implementation of spatially-varying wind adjustment factor for wildfire simulations' (Environmental Modelling and Software, 2023), 'Physics-based simulations of grassfire propagation on sloped terrain at field scale' (International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2023), and 'The effect of ignition protocol on grassfire development' (International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2020). His contributions advance bushfire prediction, ember transport modelling, and strategies for urban fringe resilience, supporting government advising and research collaborations.