Citation for Luke Bennetts

Associate Professor Luke Bennetts, from the University of Adelaide, is both a distinguished applied mathematician with an outstanding track record of high-quality research and an enthusiastic supporter of the discipline and ANZIAM. He is a natural leader who is leaving a deep and lasting legacy by mentoring young people, servicing the academic community and promoting applied mathematics to society as a whole.

A/Prof Luke Bennetts

Luke’s mathematical research focusses on wave propagation, mostly water waves and their interaction with solid bodies. He is an expert on the mathematics of wave-structure interactions, dispersive waves and wave scattering, applying a mix of classical applied mathematics and novel computational methods to study fundamental mathematical models based on partial differential equations. On the other hand, Luke is heavily involved in application-driven research, for example modelling the dynamics of the marginal ice zone, including propagation of storm waves through the sea-ice-covered ocean, wave-induced ice breakup, and the resulting dynamics of the ice cover. For this very applied work, Luke combines his theoretical insight with experimental results from the laboratory and analysis of field observations.

Luke has co-authored roughly 75 peer reviewed articles in international journals, including a dozen in the prestigious Journal of Fluid Mechanics and many others in top applied mathematics outlets such as SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics and Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Luke’s applied research is published in highly regarded scientific journals including Geophysical Research Letters, Nature and Nature Communications. As an example of the influence of this work, Luke and collaborators from Norway developed the first model of coupled wave propagation and sea ice breakup, which has been adopted by many other research groups, and integrated into numerical wave and sea ice models used for operational and climate studies. The two articles describing the model have received over 300 citations combined. In another example, Luke led combined mathematical and physical modelling of the highly nonlinear phenomenon of wave overwash of ice floes, for which the three foundational articles have received over 200 citations.

Luke has been phenomenally successful in attracting external funding for his research. He is currently an ARC Future Fellow undertaking a project to integrate rifts and swell in the mathematics of ice shelf disintegration, and was previously an ARC DECRA Fellow where he assimilated ocean wave interactions with sea ice into climate models. He is currently first Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery Project for empowering next-generation sea-ice models with wave-ice mathematics. Further, Luke is currently leading the sea ice modelling component of Australia’s next generation ocean-sea ice model, as part of the Consortium for Ocean-Sea Ice Modelling in Australia community. The modelling is the main work package of an ARC Linkage Project, which involves end-users at CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the Australian Antarctic Division. Moreover, Luke is a Chief Investigator on the East Antarctic Marginal Ice Zone Project, which will be based around a multi-month voyage in 2023 on Australia’s new icebreaker.

In terms of service, Luke has been a dedicated supporter of ANZIAM and the community of mathematical sciences. He has been a regular at ANZIAM conferences since 2010 and has presented in the ANZIAM session at AustMS conferences. He has served as an AustMS Early Career Representative for four years and as an organiser of two AustMS Early Career Workshops. He was an AustMS representative at Science Meets Parliament 2021, and on the Neumann Prize Committee for the best student talk at the AustMS 2021 conference. He is on the committee of the ANZIAM South Australia branch and is currently on the ANZIAM Executive Committee.

Significantly, Luke has helped establish and lead the Australasian Wave Science community KOZWaves, which runs a highly successful biennial conference. Luke hosted KOZWaves 2015 at the University of Adelaide and obtained funding support from the US Office of Naval Research. He has been the Chair of the KOZWaves Executive Committee since it was set up in 2015. Luke is the principal organiser of a six-month research programme to be held at the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge in 2023. He was the managing guest editor of a theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, which was published in 2022. He was the lead organiser of the Australian Academy of Science conference on Multiscale Dynamics of the Southern Ocean in 2021 and was an organiser of two AMSI–AustMS supported conferences in 2022.

In terms of public engagement, Luke writes articles and give talks to disseminate his research to the broader science community. He has given have public lectures for the National Science Week, as part of the Tonsley Innovation Hub, and at the South Australian Museum. Further, he has written three articles for The Conversation to communicate his research fields to a broader audience. Importantly, Luke has been an energetic and thoughtful mentor for many research students and postdocs over the years, leaving an enduring footprint on young researchers in our community.

Luke has been recognised elsewhere for his excellent record of research and service. Apart from his ARC DECRA and Future Fellowships, Luke was previously a SA Tall Poppy Winner in 2016. He has held a Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship, a Simons Fellowship as part of a Newton Institute programme at Cambridge and was joint winner of the AustMS Gavin Brown Best Paper Prize. In 2016 in was awarded the Christopher Heyde Medal by the Australian Academy of Science to recognise outstanding research in the mathematical sciences by researchers up to 10 years post PhD. And notably, in 2020 Luke was awarded the Australian Mathematical Society Medal for distinguished research in the mathematical sciences, a medal that is awarded once each year for mathematicians that are less than 15 years out of their PhD.

The selection panel enthusiastically recommends that Luke Bennetts be awarded ANZIAM’s EO Tuck Medal for 2023.