Andy Wilkins

Andy Wilkins has a PhD in Mathematical Physics from the University of Adelaide.  He specialises in applied mathematics, and has worked in rather diverse fields ranging through: the phase transitions of spider silk; tree growth; wine aging; sewerage processing; steel making; washing-machine optimisation; thermal properties of windows; and topology optimisation and design.  Over recent years he has built and analysed many numerical models of underground coal mining operations, including looking at mechanical aspects such as strata deformation and chock loading, as well as fluid flows, such as predicting mine water makes and methane flows, and the coupling between the mechanics and fluid flows.  To perform this modelling, he has designed and written large amount of computer code in a variety of languages: graphical pre and post processors, as well as high-performance solver code.