Skip to main navigation Skip to main content
The University of Southampton
Engineering

Dr Keith Daly MEng, PhD

Research Fellow

Dr Keith Daly's photo

Dr Keith Daly is Research Fellow within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.

After completing my MEng in electronic engineering at the University of Southampton in 2007 I began my Ph.D. in applied mathematics also at the University of Southampton.

Throughout my Ph.D. and subsequent fellowship I was involved in several different projects relating to the propagation of light in liquid crystal structures. These projects include the efficient modelling of liquid crystal alignment to an applied field based on an invariant manifold technique, application of the liquid crystal model to several novel devices including photorefractive and plasmonic liquid crystal cells and the propagation of light in planar waveguide devices which are used for sensing applications.

I am currently a post-doctoral research fellow studying the flow of water in soil and the uptake of water by roots. My research is theoretical but has ties to experimental studies carried out in Nottingham. The aim is to develop and models of fluid flow and water uptake which are sufficiently general to be applied to representation of real soil structures captured using X-ray CT. The key mathematical technique used is homogenization which we apply to soil structures of different size and scale. The result is a simple set of parameters used to describe fluid flow which capture only the essential details from the soil structure.

Research interests

My research interests include asymptotic techniques such as homogenisation and multiple scale analysis in combination with numerical modelling techniques such as spectral collocation methods, quadratures for singular integrals and optimisation techniques.

I am primarily involved in modelling water movement in soil and uptake through roots using image based geometries obtained using X-ray CT equipment at the University of Nottingham. The key mathematical technique used is homogenization which we apply to soil structures of different size and scale. However, this project also involves numerical modelling and singular asymptotic techniques.

Research group

Bioengineering Science

Affiliate research group

Computational Modelling Group

Research project(s)

Mathematical Optical Physics

Multiscale image based computational modelling of plant-soil interaction

Liquid Crystals and Classical Optics

X-ray Computed Tomography and image-based modelling of plant roots and nutrient uptake

Dr Keith Daly
Engineering, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton. SO17 1BJ United Kingdom
Share Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on Weibo
Privacy Settings