Rate My Professor Matt Nicol

Matthew Nicol is the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Houston, where he has been a faculty member since 2004. Prior to his appointment at UH, he held permanent positions at UMIST (now the University of Manchester) from 1996 to 1999 and at the University of Surrey from 1999 to 2003. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1992, a B.A. with Honors from the University of Sydney in 1986, and a B.Sc. from the University of Sydney in 1985. Nicol serves as faculty in the MS in Statistics and Data Science program and is actively involved in the university's Dynamical Systems research group.

Nicol's research focuses on ergodic theory, dynamical systems, and probability theory, particularly the statistical properties of chaotic dynamical systems. His recent work emphasizes estimation of rare events using extreme value theory and other techniques. He has co-authored the book 'Extremes and Recurrence in Dynamical Systems,' a 275-page volume published by Wiley in 2016. Additionally, he contributed the chapter 'Analysis and Simulation of Extremes and Rare Events in Complex Systems' to the Springer volume 'Advances in Dynamics, Optimization and Computation' in 2020, honoring Michael Dellnitz. In recognition of his contributions to research, teaching, and service, Nicol received the 2021 Moores Professorship Award. He has organized and taught in multiple Houston Dynamics Summer Schools, delivering lectures on topics including probability in dynamics, decay of correlations, Markov chains and mixing times, and thermodynamic formalism. His publications have been cited more than 2,900 times on Google Scholar.