21 Sep, 2026
Spotlight: Benjamin Hamblin
Meet ARC COE-CSI PhD Candidate Benjamin Hamblin
After completing First Class Honours degrees in Electronic Engineering and Theoretical Physics in 2023, Ben joined our Centre as a PhD candidate in Mathematical Sciences at Curtin University. He is supervised by Chief Investigator Professor Klaus Regenauer-Lieb and Associate Investigator Professor Victor Calo.
What is your research about?
My research is focussed on developing sophisticated models of mixed dimensional bodies, think cells (a 3 dimensional object coated in a thin membrane), and understanding how to describe the physics and chemistry of objects whose shape and internal characteristics are changing in time.
Why are you interested?
In undergraduate physics we are taught some elementary classical mechanics and thermodynamics, but then move on. There are so many fringe cases which are poorly understood, but the mainstream community seems to have ignored them and treat them as pathological. I’m interested in developing unified descriptions that can handle the mundane and the exotic.
What do you hope to achieve with this research?
In applied terms, we want to understand biological systems, catalysis and natural continua (glaciers, lava flows, ocean currents etc.) better. We want to predict how cancer cells will multiply under changing conditions, when ice sheets will collapse, under what conditions a circumpolar current will stop flowing. There are boundless applications of good continuum models but these ones pique my interest.
What are your career goals\aspirations?
I would love to specialise in mathematical earth sciences; especially research into environmental forecasting in the polar regions. Understanding interactions between ice sheets, ecosystems, atmospheric flows and the ocean is a pressing and relatively underdeveloped field (in terms of unified mathematical machinery), and I aim to be involved in a research capacity.