Michael  Novack

Postdoctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University

Email address: mnovack at andrew dot cmu dot edu


Personal Info

I am a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University, where my mentors are Irene Fonseca and Giovanni Leoni . I am interested in the calculus of variations, geometric measure theory, and partial differential equations.

Previously, I was a postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin with Francesco Maggi and the University of Connecticut with Xiaodong Yan . I completed my doctoral studies at Indiana University under the supervision of Peter Sternberg  and Dmitry Golovaty . 

My CV can be found here.

Publications and Preprints

16. L. Bronsard, M. Novack. An infinite double bubble theorem, submitted for publication (2024). pdf file 

15. F. Maggi, M. Novack, D. Restrepo. A hierarchy of Plateau problems and the approximation of Plateau's laws via the Allen-Cahn equation, submitted for publication (2023). pdf file 

14. M. Novack. On the relaxation of Gauss's capillarity theory under spanning conditions, submitted for publication (2023). pdf file 

13. F. Maggi, M. Novack, D. Restrepo. Plateau borders in soap films and Gauss' capillarity theory, submitted for publication (2023). pdf file 

12. N. Fusco, F. Maggi, M. Morini, M. Novack. Rigidity and large volume residues in exterior isoperimetry for convex sets, submitted for publication (2023). pdf file 

11. M. Novack. Regularity for minimizers of a planar partitioning problem with cusps, submitted for publication (2023). pdf file 

10. F. Maggi, M. Novack. Isoperimetric residues and a mesoscale flatness criterion for hypersurfaces with bounded mean curvature, submitted for publication (2022). pdf file 

9. M. Novack, X. Yan. A smectic liquid crystal model in the periodic setting, Nonlinear Analysis 228 (2023) . pdf file 

8. M. Novack, I. Topaloglu, R. Venkatraman. Least Wasserstein distance between disjoint shapes with perimeter regularization, Journal of Functional Analysis 284 (2023), issue 1 . pdf file 

7. M. Novack, X. Yan. Nonlinear approximation of 3D smectic liquid crystals: sharp lower bound and compactness, Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations 61 (2022), no. 157. pdf file 

6. D. Golovaty, M. Novack, P. Sternberg. A one-dimensional variational problem for cholesteric liquid crystals with disparate elastic constants, Journal of Differential Equations 286 (2021), 785-820 . pdf file 

5. M. Novack, X. Yan. Compactness and sharp lower bound for a 2D smectics model, Journal of Nonlinear Science 31 (2021), no. 60. pdf file

4. D. Golovaty, M. Novack, P. Sternberg. A novel Landau-de Gennes model with quartic elastic terms, European Journal of Applied Mathematics 32 (2020), no. 1, 177-198. pdf file

3. D. Golovaty, Y.-K. Kim, O. Lavrentovich, M. Novack, P. Sternberg. Phase transitions in nematics: textures with tactoids and disclinations, Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena 15 (2020) no. 8. pdf file

2. D. Golovaty, M. Novack, P. Sternberg, R. Venkatraman. A model problem for nematic-isotropic phase transitions with highly disparate elastic constants, Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis 236 (2020), no. 3, 1739–1805. pdf file

1. M. Novack. Dimension  reduction for the Landau-de Gennes model: the vanishing nematic correlation length limit, SIAM Journal on Mathematical Analysis 50 (2018), no. 6, 6007–6048. pdf file

Miscellaneous