Benoit Pausader
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
When you drive over a bridge, chances are you aren’t thinking about how forces such as the wind or currents (if the bridge spans water) are affecting the structure.
Chances are even less that you are thinking about the mathematical equations that describe how such forces influence the bridge.
But Benoit Pausader is not a typical thinker. Indeed, Pausader lives in the world of mathematics, and conjuring the partial differential equations that can describe, say, the wave-like motion of a suspension bridge as it is barraged by outside forces is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Pausader is an incoming assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. The 25-year-old French citizen will teach intermediate calculus beginning this fall as he continues his research into fourth-order nonlinear wave equations.
Pausader became interested in fourth-order wave equations and related Schrödinger equations as a graduate student. A section of his thesis turned into a paper titled “Scattering and the Levandosky-Strauss conjecture for fourth-order nonlinear wave equations,” published last year in the Journal of Differential Equations.
Pausader sent his paper to be read by Walter Strauss, an applied mathematics professor at Brown and, as it turns out, one-half of the duo who inspired Pausader’s research.
“I further developed the study of their equation,” Pausader explained modestly. “They had studied it, and I continued it.”
The work raised eyebrows. Strauss, impressed by Pausader’s analysis, invited him to Brown last fall. Soon after came an offer to teach.
“This is not what I had planned,” Pausader recalled. “I had another year of [research] money. [But] I thought it was nice here. So I rushed and finished my Ph.D.”
Before coming to Brown, Pausader taught for two years in the Mathematics Department at the Universite de Cergy-Pontoise, located on the outskirts of Paris. “I have no idea how teaching is here,” Pausader said. “This would be my main fear.”
His apprehension may be alleviated by the experience he gained when he joined a humanitarian mission to Madagascar last year. The team fanned out to rural areas, teaching local children basic hygiene, French, reading, and math while their parents worked. Although the group had no access to water or electricity, Pausader speaks glowingly of his time there.
“It was completely different from anything I’ve ever done,” he said with a smile.