Rate My Professor Justin Tzou

Tzou's research focuses on quantitative descriptions and critical thresholds of diffusive processes, particularly mean first passage time problems with small absorbing traps in the narrow capture problem, including scenarios with mobile traps relevant to cellular processes and predator-prey dynamics. He employs asymptotic methods, PDE techniques, numerical continuation, and Monte Carlo simulations to analyze these, alongside the stability and dynamics of patterns in reaction-diffusion systems in one, two, and three spatial dimensions. Key publications include 'Green’s functions of the fractional Laplacian on a square: Boundary considerations and applications to the Lévy flight narrow capture problem' (Physical Review Research, 2025), 'Eigenvalue variations of the Neumann Laplace operator due to perturbed boundary conditions' (Research in the Mathematical Sciences, 2025), 'A counterexample to the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis in the narrow capture framework' (Physical Review Research, 2024), 'Asymptotic analysis of first passage time problems inspired by ecology' (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2015), and 'A cell topography-based mechanism for ligand discrimination by the T cell receptor' (PNAS, 2019). Among his awards and fellowships are the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship, Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship, NSERC Postgraduate Doctoral Fellowship, NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Master’s Fellowship, Northwestern University Cabell Terminal Year Fellowship, and Early-Career Travel Award from SIAM Conference on Nonlinear Waves & Coherent Structures. Tzou serves as lead Chief Investigator on Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP220101808 and has co-organized mini-symposia at SIAM and CAIMS conferences.