Dr Gerald Pereira

Dr Pereira completed his PhD in Applied Mathematics where he implemented random walk models to describe polymer behaviour and fluid mechanical models for flow in confined random environments. He gained experience in a variety of numerical techniques including Monte Carlo (MC) methods, Molecular Dynamics (MD) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Subsequently he took up a research fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge, UK), followed by an ARC QEII fellowship before obtaining a tenured academic position in the School of Physics at Victoria University Wellington (NZ). He returned to Australia, due to family commitments, where he took up a continuing scientist position in the CFD group in the (then) Division of Mathematics and Statistics at CSIRO.

Dr Pereira's major scientific contribution are in describing the dynamics of liquid crystal photoelastomers, with Prof. Mark Warner at Cambridge (see Physical Review Focus link), developing theoretical models for the self-assembly of block copolymers (with Prof David RM Williams, ANU) and grafted polymers (see attachments) and fluid dynamics for flow through confined random domains. In the past five years he has focused on the lattice Boltzmann (LB) method for fluid flow at the micron length scale and below. The emphasis has been to determine whether conventional LB methods can be appropriately refined to accurately describe flow through unresolved (or sub-resolution porosity) computed tomographical data-sets.

Dr Pereira is also interested in developing a fundamental understanding and (associated) theoretical models to describe the flow and segregation of granular materials which occurs whenever the constituent particles differ in their intrinsic properties (such as size, density, shape). The main aim in this work is to obtain a predictive model which would enable the user to control the macroscopic characteristics of the granular material.