Rate My Professor Jean-Luc Thiffeault

Jean-Luc Thiffeault serves as Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998, an M.A. in Physics from the same university in 1995, and a B.S. in Physics from McGill University in 1993. His professional career began with postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin in 1999 and Columbia University from 1999 to 2002. He then held positions as Lecturer and Reader in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London from 2003 to 2007. Since joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007 as Assistant Professor, he advanced to Associate Professor in 2010 and full Professor in 2013, assuming the role of Department Chair in 2023. Thiffeault has held numerous visiting positions, including CNRS Visiting Professor at Université Aix-Marseille in 2019 and Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2015.

Thiffeault's research specializes in applied mathematics, encompassing fluid dynamics, chaotic and turbulent mixing, topological dynamics and chaos, and the motion of swimming microorganisms. His contributions include topological methods for analyzing mixing and transport in dynamical systems and models of enhanced diffusion by biogenic mixing. Key publications feature the review "Using multiscale norms to quantify mixing and transport" in Nonlinearity (2012), "Frontiers of chaotic advection" in Reviews of Modern Physics (2017), "Optimal stirring strategies for passive scalar mixing" in Journal of Fluid Mechanics (2011), "Unraveling hagfish slime" in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (2019), and "The mathematics of burger flipping" in Physica D (2022). He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022 for innovative contributions to mixing and transport, including topological methods and microswimmer diffusion. Additional honors include the SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize (2012), Van Vleck Professorship (2015-2019), and plenary lectures at events such as APS-DFD (2020) and SIAM Dynamical Systems Meeting (2013). Thiffeault has delivered over 160 invited seminars worldwide, serves as Communicating Editor for Journal of Nonlinear Science (since 2023) and Associate Editor for Nonlinearity (since 2022), and has been faculty at the Woods Hole Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer Program since 2002. He supervises PhD students and contributes to university committees and professional organizations.