Rate My Professor Tim Molteno

Dr. Tim Molteno is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago. He obtained his PhD from the University of Otago in nonlinear dynamics and topological analysis of chaotic systems. Following his doctorate, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Toronto, focusing on nonlinear systems, granular flow, and spatio-temporal chaos. Prior to returning to academia, Molteno worked at Sapient Inc. in Boston, a high-tech consulting firm, developing large data systems for the oil and gas industry. He later joined a startup company specializing in real-time analysis of video and images. At the University of Otago, he leads the Electronics Group within the Department of Physics, emphasizing modern electronics encompassing communication, computation, control, and circuits.

Molteno's research centers on developing innovative measurement techniques and implementing them in novel devices that quantify measurement uncertainty. His expertise includes satellite navigation systems, radio imaging research, agritech applications, implantable medical devices, efficient embedded processing architectures, numerical electromagnetism through nec2++, and SympyTeX. Key projects under his leadership involve FPGA-based computation devices, advanced computational inference for inverse problems, contributions to non-invasive electrical capacitance imaging, machine vision and learning, industrial process monitoring, and extreme computer architectures for radio astronomy. He is the originator of the Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART) project, initiated in 2014, which deploys innovative low-cost radio telescopes and has garnered international recognition, including presentation of the prestigious Steve Rawlings Lecture on the topic. Molteno teaches a range of courses, including PHSI 132 Fundamentals of Physics II, PHSI 245 Electronics for the Sciences, PHSI 282 Experimental Physics I, PHSI 343 Waves in Physical Systems (as course coordinator), and PHSI 381 Experimental Physics II. His recent publications include 'Correlation structure in flux-density calibrator models' (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2024), 'Newly designed antenna platform for Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART)' (Proceedings of the International Microwave and Antenna Symposium, 2023), 'Nature's wind turbines: The measured aerodynamic efficiency of spinning seeds approaches theoretical limits' (Biomimetics, 2022), 'Transmission electron microscopy tilt-series data from in-situ chondrocyte primary cilia' (Data, 2021), and 'V-spline: An adaptive smoothing spline for trajectory reconstruction' (Sensors, 2021).