James MacLaurin

Assistant Professor, Mathematical Sciences
About Me
I was born in Australia, and studied Pure Mathematics and Philosophy for my undergraduate degree at the University of New South Wales. I completed a Phd at Oxford in 2014, under the supervision of Prof. Jon Chapman and Tiina Roose.
Postdoctoral experience at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France, University of Sydney and University of Utah
Education
Ph.D.; University of Oxford ; 2014
B.A.; University of New South Wales; Philosophy; 2007
B.S.; University of New South Wales; Pure Mathematics; 2007
Office Hours
Monday 2-4 pm
2026 Fall Courses
MATH 792B - PRE DOCTORAL RESEARCH
MATH 337 - LINEAR ALGEBRA
Teaching Interests
I enjoy teaching a wide range of mathematics. I have taught first year calculus, 3rd year undergraduate mathematical biology, and a graduate course on stochastic processes.
Past Courses
MATH 111: CALCULUS I
MATH 211: CALCULUS III A
MATH 333: PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS
MATH 337: LINEAR ALGEBRA
MATH 337: LINEAR ALGEBRA - HONORS
MATH 371: PHYSIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
MATH 373: INTRO TO MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY
MATH 373: INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY
MATH 374: STOCHASTIC AND DISCRETE MODELS IN BIOLOGY
MATH 691: STOCHASTIC PROCESSES
Research Interests
Mathematical Biology
Stochastic Processes
Dynamical Systems.
Journal Article
James N. MacLaurin, Jay Newby. 2025. " Extreme first passage times for populations of identical rare events." SIAM Applied Mathematics, vol. 85, no. 1.
James N. MacLaurin. 2023. "Phase Reduction of Waves, Patterns, and Oscillations Subject to Spatially-Extended Noise." SIAM Applied Mathematics, vol. 83.
James N. MacLaurin, Zachary Adams. "The Isochronal Phase of Stochastic PDE and Integral Equations: Metastability and Other Properties." Journal of Differential Equations, vol. 414, no. 5.
James N. MacLaurin, Giulio Zucal, Christian Kuehn. 2022. "Stochastic Rotating Waves." Stochastic Dynamics.
James N. MacLaurin, Jean-Marc Fellous, Peter Thomas, Benjamin Lindner. 2022. "Stochastic oscillators in biology: introduction to the special issue." Biological Cybernetics, vol. 116.
James N. MacLaurin, Pedro Vilanova. 2021. "Synchronization in Stochastic Biochemical Oscillators Subject to Extrinsic Multiplicative Noise." SIAM Journal of Applied Dynamical Systems.
Conference Abstract
"Stochastic Oscillations in Biology"
American Physical Society, 2022.
Conference Proceeding
"The Effect of Stochastic Bursting on Biological Clock Precision"
European Control Conference Proceedings, May, 2020.