My interests lie broadly in dynamical systems, coherent structures and pattern formation. My thesis work focused on nonlocally coupled systems, with motivation from biology, materials science and ecology.
Papers and Preprints:
Olivia Clifton (Cannon) and Arnd Scheel. Coherent structures in nonlocal systems -- functional analytic tools.
J. Dyn. Diff. Equat. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10884-023-10290-2
Olivia Clifton (Cannon), Ty Bondurant, Malindi Whyte, and Arnd Scheel. Shifting consensus in a biased compromise model. SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Sys. 23 (2024), 297-324.
Research with undergraduate students:
I am currently leading a group in Spring 2025 with the Illinois Mathematics Lab, in a project called Spatial Spreading of Altruism. We are investigating a model from math biology for the multiscale evolution of selfless traits. Specifically, we are trying to see whether spatial spreading phenomena are numerically observed without stochasticity.
Alongside my thesis research in Minnesota, I was also a graduate student mentor for the
UMN Complex Systems REU in 2020, 2022 and 2024, on the following projects:
Summer 2024 - 2D Swarming Phenomena
Summer 2022 - Social Dynamics
Summer 2020 - Networks and coupled oscillators