Life is a random process with a drift.

Professor Peter Markowich focuses his research on deepening the understanding of the mathematical and numerical analysis of partial differential equations (PDEs) and their application in physics, biology, and engineering.

Education and early career

Markowich earned an M.S., a Ph.D. and the Habilitation for Applied and Numerical Mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology (TU-Wien), Austria. He became Full Professor at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) in 1989. From 1999 until 2007 he worked at the University of Vienna, Austria, as Professor of Applied Analysis and from 2007-2011at the University of Cambridge, UK, as Professor of Applied Mathematics. Since 2011 he is Distinguished Professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.

Honors & Awards

  • 2018: J.T.Oden Faculty Fellowship at ICES (University of Texas)
  • 2018: Ciprian Foias Lectures of Mathematics at Texas A&M
  • 2017: Distinguished Lecture, Institute for Advanced Studies at Hongkong City University
  • 2016: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Invitation Fellowship at Kyoto University
  • 2016: Distinguished Lecture in the "Adventures in Theory" Lecture Series at the Center of Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences of Duke University
  • 2015: Keynote Lecture, AIP Conference Helsinki (Applied Inverse Problems) • 2015: Frontier Lecture, CSRC Beijing
  • 2015: Frontier Lecture, CSRC Beijing
  • 2015: Keynote Lecture, AIP Conference Helsinki (Applied Inverse Problems)
  • 2015: William Benter Distinguished Lecturer, Hongkong City University
  • 2015: offered Andris A. Zoltners Distinguished Professorship at Purdue University (declined)
  • 2015: J.T.Oden Faculty Fellowship at ICES (University of Texas)
  • 2014: Distinguished Lecture Series, UCLA
  • 2013: Von Neumann Visiting Professorship at the Technical University Munich
  • 2012: Excellence Chair at Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China
  • 2011: Excellence Chair of the Foundation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris
  • 2011: Matheon Lectures, WIAS Berlin
  • 2010: Wolfgang Wasow Memorial Lecture, University of Wisconsin Madison
  • 2010: Invited Lecture (45 min) at the ICM 2010 (International Congress of Mathematicians 2010, Hyderabad, India)
  • 2009: Humboldt Research Award
  • 2009: Ramanujan Memorial Lecture, Saha Institute Kolkata
  • 2009: Professorial Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge
  • 2008: Inaugural KAUST Investigator Award
  • 2007: Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
  • 2005: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Invitation Fellowship at Kyoto University
  • 2005: Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
  • 2004: Seminario Matematico e Fisico di Milano
  • 2003: Plenary Lecture at the ICIAM 2003 (5th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Sydney, Australia)
  • 2000: Wittgenstein Award of the Austrian Science Fund

Areas of expertise and current scientific interests

Professor Markowich's primary research interests are in the mathematical and numerical analysis of partial differential equations (PDEs) and their application in physics, biology and engineering.
In particular, he is interested in:

  • classical and quantum mechanical kinetic theory
  • analytical and numerical problems occurring in highly oscillatory PDEs (like semiclassical asymptotics)
  • Wigner transforms
  • nonlinear PDEs describing dispersive and, resp., diffusive phenomena
  • singular perturbations and long-time asymptotics
  • generalized Sobolev inequalities
  • inverse problems in solid state physics
  • image processing using PDEs

Career recognitions

Professor Markowich received a number of awards and recognition in the course of his career. He was given the Wittgenstein Award by the Austrian Science Fund in 2000, the KAUST Inaugural Investigator Award in 2008 and the Humboldt Research Award in 2009, he was invited to give Distinguished and Excellence Lectures in scientific institutions all over the world and he was an invited speaker at the two most important Congresses in mathematics (plenary at ICIAM in 2003 and invited at the ICM 2010) . Moreover, in 2015 and again in 2018 he held a J.T.Oden Faculty Fellowship at ICES (University of Texas), the Von Neumann Visiting Professorship at the Technical University Munich in 2013, the Excellence Chair at Jiaotong University, Shanghai, in 2012, and the Excellence Chair of the Foundation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris, France in 2011. Peter Markowich is a Foreign Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Editorial activities

Markowich is the author of a series of books where he presents topics of science and engineering which occur in nature or are part of daily life. It describes phenomena which are modeled by partial differential equations, relating to physical variables like mass, velocity, and energy, to their spatial and temporal variations. 

 

Publications

Peter Markowich's profile list of publications on ORCID
Peter Markowich's profile list of publications on KAUST Repository