Rate My Professor Philip Schrader

Philip Schrader is a Lecturer in Mathematics and serves as Academic Chair of Mathematics and Statistics in the School of Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry and Physics at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. He earned his PhD in 2016 from the University of Western Australia, where his doctoral thesis, titled "Global analysis of one-dimensional variational problems," was supervised by Lyle Noakes. Schrader's research focuses on geometric analysis, including Sobolev gradient flows, higher-order curvature flows, and variational problems on curves and immersed manifolds.

Schrader's key publications demonstrate his contributions to these areas. Notable works include "Representation formulae for higher order curvature flows" (2023, Journal of Differential Equations, with J.A. McCoy and G. Wheeler), "On the H¹(ds^γ)-Gradient Flow for the Length Functional" (2023, The Journal of Geometric Analysis, with G. Wheeler and V.M. Wheeler), "MORSE THEORY FOR ELASTICA" (2016, Journal of Geometric Mechanics), "Existence of variationally defined curves with higher order elliptic Lagrangians" (2015, Nonlinear Analysis: Theory, Methods & Applications), "Conditional extremals in complete Riemannian manifolds" (2012, with L. Noakes, Nonlinear Analysis: Theory, Methods & Applications), "A Sobolev gradient flow for the area-normalised Dirichlet energy of H¹ maps" (2025, Advances in Calculus of Variations, with S. Okabe, G. Wheeler, and V.M. Wheeler), "Convergence of Sobolev gradient trajectories to elastica" (2025, Communications in Analysis and Geometry, with S. Okabe), and "Curves of minimax spirality" (2026, ESAIM: Control, Optimisation and Calculus of Variations, with C.Y. Kaya and L. Noakes). His research output has accumulated over 180 citations. Schrader has presented at events such as the MATRIX program on Gradient Flows in Geometry and PDE (2024) and the Australian Mathematical Society meeting (2025), delivering talks on curve shortening by Sobolev gradient flow.