Professor Chris Breward

MA; MSc; DPhil (Oxford)

I was a mathematics undergraduate and graduate student at St Anne’s College (Oxford) in the 1990s. My DPhil thesis was about 'The mathematics of foam'. I spent two years at Sheffield University working in the Department of Pathology, where I constructed some of the first mathematical models for vascular tumour growth. I returned to Oxford in 2001 to a position at the Mathematical Institute as a Research Facilitator (the first of its kind) which combined research with getting grants. This was a very successful role and in 2008 we won a $25M grant from KAUST in Saudi Arabia to set up the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Mathematics (OCCAM). I was appointed to a faculty position in 2008 and was OCCAM’s Associate Director from 2008-2014 (when the money ran out). I then spent 10 years as co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Industrially Focused Mathematical Modelling (InFoMM), through which Oxford trained 68 applied maths DPhil students in the skills needed to tackle 21st century industrial problems using cutting-edge mathematical techniques. At its peak, InFoMM had over 80 company partners. 

In 2023 I was appointed as the inaugural Scientific Director of the UK Knowledge Exchange Hub for Mathematical Sciences (KE Hub). The KE Hub aims to bring business, industry and government to the front door of academic mathematical sciences and vice versa. There are currently 63 departments across the UK involved. 

I joined Christ Church’s teaching team in October 2004. 

I teach first and second year applied mathematics – calculus, dynamics, ODEs/PDEs, calculus of variations, and fluid mechanics. I regularly teach intercollegiate classes in fluid mechanics or applied partial differential equations for third years, as well as lecturing (e.g. viscous flow, a third-year course). 

My research career has been centred around explaining phenomena arising in applied science, industry and medicine. Often these involve fluid mechanics or heat and mass transfer. One key area of my work has been the study of surface-active agents, such as washing up liquid, which modify the surface tension of air-liquid interfaces and can fundamentally change fluid flows. My recent work has focused on models for filters, cleaning and decontamination, flows of glass, operation of piezoelectric composite devices, silicon and aluminium production, surfactant systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium, and a few disconnected industrial processes. 

Here are some papers that indicate my research interests:

Filters

Kiradjiev KB, Breward CJW, and Griffiths IM. (2022) A model for the lifetime of a reactive filter. J Engrg Math. 133:11 DOI:10.1007/s10665-022-10214-x 

Breward CJW and Kiradjiev KB. (2021) A simple model for the desulphurisation of flue gas using reactive filters. J. Engrg Math. 129:14. DOI:10.1007/s10665-021-10145-z 

Kiradjiev KB, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, and Schwendeman D (2021) A homogenised model for a reactive filter. SIAM J. Appl. Math. 81(2) 591-619. DOI:10.1137/19M1305495

Cleaning and decontamination

Luckins EK, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, and Please CP (2024) The role of temperature and drying cycles on impurity deposition in drying porous media. EPL.146. 33001. DOI:10.1209/0295-5075/ad3a9a 

Luckins EK, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, and Please CP (2024) Mathematical Modelling of impurity deposition during evaporation of dirty liquid in a porous material. J. Fluid Mech. 2024;986:A31. DOI:10.1017/jfm.2024.360

Luckins EK, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, and Please CP. (2023) The effect of pore-scale contaminant distribution on the reactive decontamination of porous media. Euro. J. Appl. Math. DOI:10.1017/S0956792523000219

Glass flows

O'Kiely D, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, Howell PD, and Lange U. (2019) Out-of-plane buckling in two-dimensional glass drawing. J. Fluid Mech., 869, 587-609. DOI:10.1017/jfm.2019.221 

O'Kiely D, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, Howell PD, and Lange U. (2018) Glass sheet redraw through a long heater zone. IMA J. Appl. Math. DOI: DOI:10.1093/imamat/hxy021 

O'Kiely D, Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, Howell PD, and Lange U (2015) Edge behaviour in the glass redraw process. J. Fluid Mech., 785, 248-269. DOI:10.1017/jfm.2015.629

Silicon and aluminium production

Metherall B, Breward CJW, Oliver JM, Please CP, and Sloman BM. (2023) Modelling the reduction of quartz in a quartz-carbon pellet. J. Engrg Math., DOI:10.1007/s10665-023-10277-4

Kovacs A, Breward CJW, Einarsrud KE, Halvorsen SA, Nordgard-Hansen E, Manger E, Munch A, and Oliver JM. (2020) A heat and mass transfer problem for the dissolution of an alumina particle in a cryolite bath. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer. 162, 120232. DOI:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2020.120232

Surfactants

Breward CJW and Howell PD. (2019) Modelling surfactant systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium. SIAM J. Appl. Math. 79(3), 1098-1123. DOI:10.1137/18M1216006 

Breward CJW, Griffiths IM, Howell PD, and Morgan M (2015) Straining flow of a weakly interacting polymer-surfactant solution. Euro. J. Appl. Math., 26 (5), 743-772. DOI:10.1017/S0956792515000327 

Morgan CE, Breward CJ, Griffiths IM, and Howell PD (2015) Mathematical Modelling of Surfactant Self-Assembly at Interfaces. SIAM J. Appl. Math., 75(2), 836-860. DOI:10.1137/140983641

A full list of my publications can be found here.

I am involved with leading Air Training Corps activities in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire. I enjoy playing modern board games.