Dr Chris Stevens

Personal website

Research

My research lies in the field of mathematical and computational relativity. I am particularly interested in:

• Black holes and gravitational waves
• Initial boundary value problems for Einstein’s field equations
• Cauchy-characteristic matching and characteristic extraction
• The conformal field equations and global properties of space-times
• Conformal Cyclic Cosmology

I have multiple student projects available; if you are interested in doing a fourth-year project, MSc. or Ph.D. related to any of the above fields feel free to send me an email, or stop by my office to discuss the possibilities.

Research grants

• (2018-2020) Competitive Programme for Rated Researchers, Cauchy characteristic matching, and other uses of the characteristic method in numerical relativity, 1.1 million ZAR over three years, NRF, South Africa.

Awards

• (2020): Outstanding Research Group, Division of Science, University of Otago.
• (2019): IOP Publishing Outstanding Reviewer Award, Classical and Quantum Gravity.
• (2013): Aitken prize, New Zealand Mathematical Society.

Positions

• Apr. 2020 - Marsden Grant Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Otago, New Zealand
• Oct. 2018 - Mar. 2020 Applied Mathematics Lecturer, Rhodes University, South Africa
• Jan. 2018 - Sep. 2018 Claude Leon Postdoctoral Fellow, Rhodes University, South Africa
• Apr. 2017 - Dec. 2017 CoE Postdoctoral Fellow, Rhodes University, South Africa
• Jul. 2016 - Mar. 2017 Temporary Lecturer, University of Otago, New Zealand

Postgraduate students

• 2019 Jonathan Hakata (MSc., current)
• 2019 Sebenele Thwala (MSc., completed)
• 2019 Sinakho Gobozi (honours, completed)

Publications

• John, Anslyn J., and Stevens, C., “Accretion onto deformed black holes via pseudo-Newtonian potentials.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.10377 (2019). Conference proceedings for HEASA 2018.
• Doulis G., Frauendiener, J., Stevens, C.,& Whale, B., "COFFEE - An MPI-parallelised Python package for the numerical evolution of differential equations", SoftwareX (2019) 100283
• John, A., & Stevens, C., Bondi accretion in the spherically symmetric Johannsen-Psaltis space-time European Physical Journal C (2019) 79:962
• Barack, Leor, et al. Black holes, gravitational waves and fundamental physics: a roadmap. Classical and quantum gravity 36.14 (2019): 143001.
• Beyer, Florian, et al. “The numerical initial boundary value problem for the generalized conformal field equations.” Physical Review D 96 (2017): 084020.
• Frauendiener, J., Stevens, C., and Whale, B., “Numerical evolution of plane gravitational waves in the Friedrich-Nagy gauge.” Physical Review D 89.10 (2014): 104026.
• Barker, R. J., et al. “Closed‐population capture–recapture modeling of samples drawn one at a time.” Biometrics 70.4 (2014): 775-782.