Spencer Smith

he/him

  • Associate Professor of Physics
Spencer Smith, Faculty

Spencer Smith's work seeks to characterize the complexity inherent in chaotic fluid motion by uncovering dynamically relevant and topologically robust fluid structures. He investigates how these ideas are pertinent from micro-fluidic chips at the small scale to pollution tracking and prediction in oceanic flows on a much larger scale and touch on some of the deep questions in fluid dynamics, such as the nature of turbulence.

Spencer is also very interested in the intersection of art and physics, and he curated a show at the MHC Art Museum in fall 2017 on the science photographs of Berenice Abbott. 

Areas of Expertise

physics (fluid dynamics); math (dynamic systems theory & topology); computer science (finite elements, data structures, algorithm development, and numerical methods)

Education

  • Ph.D., M.S., Tufts University
  • B.A., Dartmouth College

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Recent Campus News

Mount Holyoke College welcomed Freddy Mutanguha, CEO of Aegis Trust and director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial, to discuss the Rwandan genocide, the lessons learned and how we can prevent genocide from ever happening again.

Mount Holyoke College student Ladin Akcacioglu ’24 shares a first-person experience from a visit to her home country of Turkey last year, witnessing the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, with Folklife Magazine.

Angelica Patterson, curator of education and outreach for the Miller Worley Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke College, was quoted saying that the size of humans’ role in fostering climate resilience in forests depends on the trees themselves.

Recent Publications

Smith, S.A., Gong, R. (2022). Braiding dynamics in active nematics. Frontiers in Physics, 10.

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