Michael Lindstrom

Assistant Professor, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

UTRGV Photo

PhD, Applied Mathematics, University of British Columbia, 2015

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences,
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Email: M I K E [then there is a dot] L I [ rest of my last name goes here ] [at] [5 Letters of School Initials] [dot] E D U
Phone: 956 665 7063
Office: EMAGC 3.734

my picture

Contents

Hi! My name is Mike. Thanks for visiting my Applied and Industrial Mathematics webpage. I am an applied mathematician and my research encompasses differential equations, asymptotics, numerical analysis, and data science. You can learn more about what I do by navigating through the tabs.

About Me

Academic:

I'm an Assistant Professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Before this, I was an Assistant Adjunct Professor for the Program in Computing at the University of California, Los Angeles, where I also held an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. I completed my doctor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I've always enjoyed applications of math, but I find theory can be useful and beautiful, too. I've worked on a variety of applied projects, with a few currently underway - see the research portion of this page for details of the various projects. To be very brief, the problems I'm currently working on are:

These projects combine many fascinating mathematical fields including ordinary and partial differential equations, data science, asymptotic analysis (analytic approximation schemes), and numerical analysis (studying how the problems can be coded and accurately solved with a computer). At the end of the day, though, being able to say something about the real world is what motivates me most (although the math is super cool!!!).

Personal:

I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba—the mosquito capital of Canada... also famous for the fantastically cold winters, which I am pleasantly reminded of each year when I go back to see family and friends over the break.

I completed my university education in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia (at UBC), with tons of beautiful parks and hiking trails in close proximity. I'll miss Vancouver's stellar public transit system, close proximity to nature, countless delicious restaurants, and amazing simultaneous views of the mountains and ocean!

I did live in Los Angeles for a number of years doing my postdoc at UCLA. While I can't say that LA was my favourite city, I did enjoy the weather. The food was also pretty good, but nothing was accessible without an extensive commute.

I really like the Rio Grande Valley so far: the people are friendly and the cost of living is very reasonable. The weather kills me, though. Being Canadian, I don't deal with heat very well.

Some other interests include:

I'm also a fan of Piled Higher and Deeper comics (reasonably accurate depictions of what it's like to be a grad student—I remember those days...).

Research

Research Experience and Interests

Selected projects I currently work on are below.

Current Work
  1. Mental Illness and Multimorbidity: With collaborators, we are studying patterns of multimorbidity between mental health and/or physical health conditions. We take a data-driven approach to uncover latent structures in the data and then identify how those findings are relevant for practitioners.
  2. Origin of Life: Through both theory and experiment, my students and collaborators are investigating how aspects of life could have evolved without the presense of DNA through vesicle systems.
  3. Neurodegenerative Diseases: Through the sponsored NSF LEAPS award #2316592 members of my group are studying an assortment of models of neurodegenerative diseases and how they spread in the brain.
  4. Air Turbulence: though the 2022 Montreal IPSW, we began a proof of concept for a method to impute turbulence for short intervals in the future based on prior readings local in space and time. We are now working to optimize the method and improve our knowledge of the physics.
  5. Homelessness: Los Angeles, along with many major cities, has a huge homeless problem. Right now there are over 50,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, and the problem is very complicated. There is little understanding as to the mechanisms that yield such high rates of homelessness and how individual characteristic traits influence the outcome of homeless individuals.

Research Group and Teams

Over the years I have worked with groups of students on research projects. The students have done amazing work and these collaborative projects have been among the most enjoyable experiences I've had in academia.

My current research group consists of

Here are a collection of photos of various research groups and teams I have worked with over the years: so many great memories!

Teaching

Teaching Positions

I am currently teaching courses at UTRGV. Prior to this, I taught at UCLA and at UBC.

The courses I teach and have taught are listed below:

Current:
Past:

Letters of Recommendation:

I feel I should include a short word on writing letters of recommendation. Some things to keep in mind if you ask me to write a letter:

REU Matlab Demo

For a few summer Applied Math REU's, I've taught a crash course in MATLAB. Here are some files to demo some of the basic functions/features.

Other Education Stuff

Math Education Resources wiki

I was contributor and administrator for the Math Education Resources wiki. This project began as an online database of past UBC Math Exams with hints and solutions, and has steadily expanded to a more complete online learning resource with questions by topic and interactive features. Currently we're doing an education study on the effectiveness of the wiki.

Papers, Proceedings, Theses, etc.

Journal Papers

Accepted/Published

Peer Reviewed Conference Papers:

Non Peer Reviewed Proceedings and Whitepapers:

  • C. S. Bohun, I. El Yassini, C. Fan, A. Harrabi, P. Houedry, S. Ibrahim, W. Li, M. R. Lindstrom, R. Liu, J. Schulz, L. Yang, and D. Ye. "Estimating turbulence duration and the likelihood of turbulence occurring" (2024, proceedings from the 14th Industrial Problem Solving Workshop in Montreal)
  • M. Canche, A. Ek, M. R. Lindstrom, C. Lonjarret, P. Mesana, M. Montes, N. Schonau, O. Sharif, M. Talebian, and L. Willems. "Determining the right moment for suggesting the creation of an account" (2023, proceedings from the 13th Industrial Problem Solving Workshop in Montreal)
  • Almonacid, J., Bohun, S., Bowen, D., Gkelsinis, T., Ibrahim, S., Lindstrom, M.R., Liu, J., and Ongha, K. "Turbulence in the Air" (2022, proceedings from the 12th Industrial Problem Solving Workshop in Montreal)
  • Gawas, P., Jung, H., Larocque, D., Lindstrom, M.R., Poirier, G., and Ahmed, S. "Predictive Risk Modelling in Aviation Incidents" (2020, proceedings from 10th Industrial Problem Solving Workshop in Montréal -- run online)
  • Lindstrom, M.R., Porter M.A., Shoenhard, H., Trick, S., Valles, T., and Zinski, J.M. "Networks of Necessity: Preventing COVID-19 Among Disabled People and Their Caregivers" (2020, whitepaper)
  • Boursicot, D., Comeau, M., Gagnon, P., Gauvin, C., Han, R., Ferland-Raymond, B., Lindstrom, M., Razaaly, N., Schulz, J., Shen, J., Wong, T., and Eghbalzadeh, R. "Poisson Regression for Smooth Geographic Stratification of Risk" (2019, proceedings from 9th Industrial Problem Solving Workshop in Montréal)

Theses:

Talks, Posters, Conferences, and Workshops

Upcoming:

Past:

Curriculum Vitae

You can read my CV here (Apr 2026).