James C. Ferguson

I am an applied mathematician working on the dynamics of complex natural systems. I use dynamical systems, network theory, and numerical simulations to understand how structure shapes collective behaviour — across substrates including ice (glacier and permafrost dynamics) and brains (cortical microcircuits and connectome-driven neural activity). My recurring interest is in problems where directed transport, feedback, and parameter inference meet — channelization in subglacial drainage, feed-forward amplification in cortex, and inverse problems for natural-system parameters from sparse observations.

I obtained my PhD at the University of Zürich under Andreas Vieli, working on mathematical models of debris-covered glaciers. I then moved to the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) as a postdoc in theoretical and computational neuroscience, where I studied how network topology and brain-wide signalling shape neuronal dynamics. More recently, I have been a visiting scientist at the Medical University of Vienna and a visiting lecturer at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), South Africa, where I co-taught a graduate course in Neuro AI.

Currently based in Vienna, Austria.