Rate My Professor Fabien Montiel

Montiel's research focuses on modelling wave propagation in complex media, including applied mathematics, physical oceanography, acoustics, and sea ice physics. His work covers semi-analytical methods for wave scattering, ocean wave-sea ice interactions in polar regions, buoyant particle transport, wave energy harvesting, sea ice floe breakup, and locally resonant acoustic structures. Funded projects include the Marsden Fund "How vulnerable are Antarctica's coasts to colonisation?" (2021–2024), Antarctic Science Platform "Seasonal and Interdecadal variability of sea ice in the Ross Sea" (2019–2025), Marsden Fast Start "Breaking the ice" (2019–2022), Deep South National Science Challenge (2015–2020), and Office of Naval Research (2013–2017). He supervises PhD students on wave-induced sea ice breakup and rainbow trapping in water waves, and MSc on Ross Sea ocean waves. Key publications are "Evaluation of ice dissipation parameterizations in spectral ocean wave model WAVEWATCH III" (Montiel et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2025), "Analysis of the Antarctic marginal ice zone" (Day et al., 2024), "Emerging long-term trends in Antarctic polynyas" (Duffy et al., PNAS, 2024), "Rainbow reflection and broadband energy absorption of water waves" (Wilks et al., Wave Motion, 2022), and "Physical Drivers of Ocean Wave Attenuation in the Southern Ocean Marginal Ice Zone" (Montiel, 2022). With over 1,500 Google Scholar citations, his contributions advance polar oceanography and applied mathematics.