Professor Rowena Ball

Professor
Mathematical Sciences Institute

I am an applied mathematician and physical chemist with broad research expertise in nonlinear and complex dynamical systems. My ARC Future Fellowship is entitled - “The charXive challenge and the clean coal quest: thermokinetic principles and methods for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide." The next 50 years will be the era during which the world's fuels must be decarbonised. Endex thermoreactive principles, which I co-invented in the mid 1990s, are providing a novel technology for separating carbon from fuels and flue gases. I am developing a suite of Endex decarbonation technologies in collaboration with an industry partner, Calix Ltd, and with collaborators from Imperial College London, the University of Leeds, and CanMet Energy. Endex principles also underpin carbon capture from the atmosphere and have been used by nature for millions of years: the mechanism behind thermal decomposition of biomass is an Endex thermochemical oscillator that governs the distribution of carbon between the global solid black carbon reservoir and the atmospheric CO2 reservoir. My research is elucidating this mechanism. 

Research interests

  • Mathematics Without Borders:
    What is mathematics? What is included in mathematics? Who gets to say? How and why did Western mathematics exclusively colonise minds and curriculums over the whole world? Should that situation continue unabated?
    In this suite of research projects, available for undergraduate and postgraduate scholars, we investigate the mathematical knowledges of non-Western and Indigenous societies (for an example, see this article posted on the arXiv https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.15350). We are interested in truth-telling in mathematics history, vernacular mathematical practices, and neurology of mathematical expression. We aim for respectful and collaborative advancement of Indigenous and Western sciences together, walking side-by-side. 
  • Emergence of life – from astrophysical dust formation to proto-biomolecular systems
  • Nonlinear and complex dynamical systems, fluctuation physics
  • Railways and trains, and I am also quite expert on country pub lunches

 

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