Melvin Leok's Homepage

"This place was built from chaos, into a shining example of disorder."

I'm Melvin Leok, and I'm currently a tenure-track assistant professor of mathematics at Purdue University. Prior to that, I was a T.H. Hildebrandt research assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan.

In 2004, I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis entitled, "Foundations of Computational Geometric Mechanics", in Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology, with a minor in Applied and Computational Mathematics. This is available as a Adobe Acrobat file with hypertext links, or as a perfect bound 7.5" X 9.25" book from Cafepress. I might have a few a paperback copies left over, so email me before ordering a copy from Cafepress.

I was funded by a Caltech Poincaré Fellowship (Betty and Gordon Moore Fellowship), an International Fellowship from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, and a Josephine de Kármán Fellowship, established by the late Professor Theodore von Kármán.

I was awarded the SIAM Student Paper Prize at the SIAM Annual Meeting in Montreal, and the Second Prize in the Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis, in Cambridge, UK.

My research advisor is Jerrold Marsden, and his advisor was Arthur Wightman, who was in turn advised by John Wheeler. For more information, please see my academic genealogy. My current research is on the Foundations of Computational Geometric Mechanics, which is concerned with developing the underlying mathematical infrastructure in discrete geometry to systematically apply the techniques of geometric mechanics in the construction of numerical algorithms.

My Erdös number is four. I coauthored a paper with Jerry Marsden who coauthored a paper with Michael J. Hoffman who coauthored a paper with Allen Lowell Shields who coauthored a paper with Paul Erdös.

I graduated from the Caltech in June of 2000, with a Bachelor's and Master's in Mathematics, where I was a member of Lloyd House. My undergraduate education was funded by a full scholarship from the Loke Cheng-Kim Foundation.

Prior to this, I served two and a half years of mandatory military service as a CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) Programmer / Project Specialist at the School of Military Medicine, Ulu Pandan Camp, Singapore. My last attained rank was 3SG (Third Sergeant).

Prospective graduate students might be interested to look at the review notes I wrote while preparing for my qualifying examination. My candidacy report is available online.

If you're interested in what I've been involved in the past few years, you might like to have a look at my online vita.