Alex Townsend

Associate Professor

589 Malott Hall
ajt253@cornell.edu

Educational Background

• DPhil (2014) University of Oxford

• Mathematics

• Mathematics

Research

Numerical analysis, scientific computing, and deep learning

I am interested in the study and development of numerical algorithms in applied mathematics. I mainly work in the following three areas: (1) Novel spectral methods for the solution of differential equations, (2) Low-rank techniques, and (3) Theoretical aspects of deep learning.

Publications

• Dense networks that do not synchronize and sparse ones that do (with M. Stillman and S. H. Strogatz), Chaos, 30 (2020), 083142.

• Fast algorithms using orthogonal polynomials (with S. Olver and R. M. Slevinsky), Acta Numerica, 29 (2020), pp. 573-699.

• Stable extrapolation of analytic functions (with L. Demanet), Foundations of Computational Mathematics, 19 (2019), pp. 297-331.

• Bounds on the singular values of matrices with displacement structure (with B. Beckermann), SIAM Review, 61 (2019), pp. 319-344.

• Why are big data matrices approximately low rank? (with M. Udell), SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science, 1 (2019), pp. 144-160.