$ cat research.md

Numerical Particle Trajectory Simulation

University of Oxford · 2012 – 2016

Tim's doctoral research at the University of Oxford focused on numerically simulating how superparamagnetic microspheres — tiny magnetic beads only a few microns across — move through fluid when pulled by an external magnetic field. Beads like these are used in lab-on-a-chip devices, where a magnetic field is used to sort, transport, or separate biological material suspended in a liquid.

Predicting a bead's trajectory accurately is hard: its motion combines a deterministic magnetic pull with random thermal jostling (Brownian motion), and beads can clump into agglomerates that move differently from single beads. Tim built Monte Carlo simulations — models that repeatedly sample random outcomes to build up a statistical picture of behaviour — to predict how individual and clustered beads travel, then validated the simulations against physical experiments measuring bead velocities and bead-to-bead interactions in real fluidic systems.

The work produced three peer-reviewed papers and was presented at two international conferences.