Jörn Dunkel

Faculty Title: 

Professor of Mathematics,  Physical Applied Mathematics,  Robert E Collins Distinguished Scholar

Department: 

  • Mathematics

Room: 

2-381

Phone Number: 

617-253-7826

Email: 

Faculty Bio: 

Jörn Dunkel joined the mathematics faculty as Assistant Professor in 2013. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and received tenure in 2020. He was promoted to Full Professor in 2022. His field is in physical applied mathematics. Jörn Dunkel received Diplomas in Physics (2004) and Mathematics (2005) from the Humboldt University Berlin. He completed his PhD in Statistical Physics under Peter Hänggi at the Universität Augsburg in 2008. After two years of postdoctoral research at the Rudolf-Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics in the University of Oxford, he spent three years as a Research Associate at DAMTP in the University of Cambridge. Working at the intersection of statistical and biological physics, Jörn's current research focuses on how physical properties of individual cells or microorganisms determine self organization, development and biological function in multicellular complexes. To this end, his group is developing and investigating mathematical models that describe dynamical behavior and structure formation in microbial and soft matter systems. Jörn was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship in Physics at Mansfield College, University of Oxford in 2008, and was named Research Fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge in 2011. He is the recipient of the 2011 Gustav Hertz Prize of the German Physical Society.  In 2015 Jörn was awarded an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellowship and an Edmund F. Kelly Research Award, "in recognition of work that applies mathematical methods to a new area or that offers a fundamentally new perspective on a classical problem." He also received the Complex Systems Scholar Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation in 2016. He was selected as an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society in 2017. In 2020, Jörn was selected by the Department as the next Robert E. Collins Distinguished Scholar.

Research Areas: