Research/PhD Projects

Below is a summary of possible projects for PhD studies.

Extreme Value Thoery and Risk Analysis

For a sequence of random variables X_1,..X_n, extreme value thoery (EVT) is a study of the limiting distristibution of max(X_1,..X_n) (or some intermediate order) up to some linear scaling. A possible research project is to study EVT in the context of deterministic dynamical systems, where the sequence X_1,..,X_n can be viewed as an iteration generated from a deterministic map. Applications of EVT include climate systems, stochastic systems and finance.

Statistical Properties of Strange Non-chaotic Attractors

Chaotic systems driven by quasiperiodic maps can give rise to strange non-chaotic attractors: attractors with complex fractal structure but zero Lyapunov exponents. Such attractors have been observed numerically in many systems, but many rigorous results are yet to be obtained. Dynamical questions concern those of statistical/ergodic properties, fractal structure, and robustness under perturbation.

Noisy Intermittency Maps

Chaotic maps withe neutral (non-hyperbolic) fixed points display bursty intermittent phenomenon: periods of chaos interspersed with long stretches of regular dynamics. Dynamical questions are raised for multidimensional intermittency maps and the qualitative behaviour of such maps with the addition of noise. These maps are known to be useful for generating time series data with long-memory and applications include modelling queue and network behaviour.