People

Professor Sergei Petrovskii

Chair in Applied Mathematics

School/Department: Computing and Mathematical Sciences, School of

Telephone: +44 (0)753 926 0372

Email: sp237@leicester.ac.uk

Profile

I am an applied mathematician with thirty years of research experience in mathematical ecology and ecological modelling. My research spans across a broad variety of problems in ecology and population dynamics with a particular emphasis on modelling complex multiscale environmental and ecological systems. I published four books and about 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals. My recent research on the effect of the global warming on the atmospheric oxygen where he discovered a new type of ecological catastrophe has been published in high-ranked scientific journals and highlighted by media around the world. In 2011-21 I was the Editor-in-Chief of Ecological Complexity (Elsevier); since 2020 I am the Section Editor-in-Chief “Mathematical Biology” of Mathematics (MDPI). I am also the founder and the scientific coordinator of the MPDE conference series.

Research

Applied dynamical systems in ecology & environment: coupling between biological and environmental processes multiscale models of agroecosystems in complex environments mathematical modelling of plankton dynamics Ecologically relevant diffusion-reaction systems: mechanisms of spatiotemporal self-organization in a system of interacting species pattern formation and chaos effects of stochastisity and noise exactly solvable diffusion-reaction models Models of animal movement & dispersal: random walks anomalous diffusion movement behaviour pattern formation Models of biological invasion: travelling population waves factors affecting the wave speed patterns of species spread different from travelling fronts (e.g. “patchy invasion”)

Publications

Zincenko A, Petrovskii S, Volpert V, Banerjee M. (2021) Turing instability in an economic-demographic dynamical system may lead to pattern formation on a geographical scale. J. R. Soc. Interface 18, 20210034.

J Ellis, N Petrovskaya, E Forbes, KFA Walters, S Petrovskii (2020) Movement patterns of the grey field slug (Deroceras reticulatum) in an arable field. Scientific Reports 10 (1), 1-16.

Morozov, A., Abbott, K.C., Cuddington, K., Francis, T., Gellner, G., Hastings, A., Lai, Y.C., Petrovskii, S.V., Scranton, K., Zeeman M.L. (2020) Long transients in ecology: Theory and applications. Physics of Life Reviews 32, 1-40.

Hastings, A., Abbott, K.C., Cuddington, K., Francis, T., Gellner, G., Lai, Y.C., Morozov, A., Petrovskii, S.V., Scranton, K., Zeeman M.L. (2018) Transient phenomena in ecology. Science 361, eaat6412.

Petrovskii, S.V., Sekerci, Y., Venturino, E. (2017) Regime shifts and ecological catastrophes in a model of plankton-oxygen dynamics under the climate change. J. Theor. Biol. 424, 91-109.

Petrovskaya, N., Petrovskii, S.V. (2017) Catching ghosts with a coarse net: use and abuse of spatial sampling data in detecting synchronization. J. R. Soc. Interface 14, 20160855.

Supervision

Current PhD students: Hashem Althagafi - models of population dynamics in a fragmented habitat; Omar Alqubori - models of insect trapping; Amer Alsulami - modelling plankton-oxygen dynamics under the climate change; Yazeed Alhassan - modelling plankton-oxygen dynamics in the ocean.

Teaching

Autumn term: MA2032 Vector calculus MA2510 Investigations in Mathematics Spring term: MA3063/4061/7061 Topics in Mathematical Biology

Press and media

My research on the plankton-oxygen dynamcis under the climate change (where a new type of the global ecological catastrophe was discovered) was highlighted by several news agencies over the world including AFP Business Standard Mirror and Radio Ecoshock My collaborative project with Harper Adams University on modelling slug movement (funded by AHDB Project 214-0009118) was highlighted by the BBC and by Farmers Guardian My research on ecological transients and their possible role in mass extinctions was highlighted by Newsweek

Conferences

Recent conferences where I was a keynote speaker or a co-organizer: Population Dynamics Ecology and Evolution: MPDEE-21 (Marseille April 26-30 2021) Banff Workshop: New Mathematical Methods for Complex Systems in Ecology (Banff Canada July 29 - August 2 2019) Models in Population Dynamics Ecology and Evolution - MPDEE-18 (Leicester April 9-13 2018)

Media coverage

My research on the plankton-oxygen dynamcis under the climate change (where a new type of the global ecological catastrophe was discovered) was highlighted by several news agencies over the world including AFP Business Standard Mirror and Radio Ecoshock My collaborative project with Harper Adams University on modelling slug movement (funded by AHDB Project 214-0009118) was highlighted by the BBC and by Farmers Guardian see www.fginsight.com/vip/vip/could-tags-provide-clues-to-winning-the-slug-war-15284 My research on ecological transients and their possible role in mass extinctions was highlighted by Newsweek see www.newsweek.com/why-do-mass-extinctions-occur-study-could-provide-answers-1109400

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