Rate My Professor Justin Tzou

Justin Tzou is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Macquarie University, where he has served since September 2017, promoted to Senior Lecturer in January 2023. Previously, he held a PIMS CRG Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Mathematics Department at the University of British Columbia from 2015 to 2017, an AARMS Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Dalhousie University from 2013 to 2015, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Mathematics at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology from December 2012 to July 2013. Tzou obtained his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University in 2012, with a dissertation titled 'Pattern Formation in the Weakly Nonlinear and Singularly Perturbed Regimes of the Brusselator Model,' supervised by Bernard J. Matkowsky, Vladimir A. Volpert, and Alvin Bayliss. He also earned a BASc in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia in 2007, with distinction.

Tzou's research focuses on quantitative descriptions and critical thresholds of diffusive processes, particularly mean first passage time problems with small absorbing traps in the narrow capture problem, including scenarios with mobile traps relevant to cellular processes and predator-prey dynamics. He employs asymptotic methods, PDE techniques, numerical continuation, and Monte Carlo simulations to analyze these, alongside the stability and dynamics of patterns in reaction-diffusion systems in one, two, and three spatial dimensions. Key publications include 'Green’s functions of the fractional Laplacian on a square: Boundary considerations and applications to the Lévy flight narrow capture problem' (Physical Review Research, 2025), 'Eigenvalue variations of the Neumann Laplace operator due to perturbed boundary conditions' (Research in the Mathematical Sciences, 2025), 'A counterexample to the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis in the narrow capture framework' (Physical Review Research, 2024), 'Asymptotic analysis of first passage time problems inspired by ecology' (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2015), and 'A cell topography-based mechanism for ligand discrimination by the T cell receptor' (PNAS, 2019). Among his awards and fellowships are the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship, Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship, NSERC Postgraduate Doctoral Fellowship, NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Master’s Fellowship, Northwestern University Cabell Terminal Year Fellowship, and Early-Career Travel Award from SIAM Conference on Nonlinear Waves & Coherent Structures. Tzou serves as lead Chief Investigator on Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP220101808 and has co-organized mini-symposia at SIAM and CAIMS conferences.