Michael Faulkner

Michael Faulkner

Computational statistical physicist specialising in phase transitions, planar systems, electrostatics and Monte Carlo sampling algorithms

About me

I’m an Assistant Professor in the Warwick Centre for Predictive Modelling. Primarily I’m a computational statistical physicist, which means that I use statistics to model many particles interacting with one another in a single system. This allows us to predict and utilise the macroscopic properties of the materials used in modern technology. More details can be found on my research page, but my specialisms include:

  • Emergent electrostatics, metastability and correlated dynamics in systems that experience the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition, eg, certain planar magnets, superfluids and superconductors.
  • Molecular simulation in soft-matter physics, with a focus on electrostatics, high precision and numerical stability.
  • Monte Carlo sampling algorithms in statistical physics and Bayesian computational statistics, with a particular interest in piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMPs) such as event-chain Monte Carlo.

I started my academic career as a PhD student at University College London and Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, under the co-supervision of Steve Bramwell and Peter Holdsworth. After a short postdoc and teaching position at Bristol Mathematics, I then moved to Bristol Physics in August 2017 after winning an EPSRC postdoctoral research fellowship. I was also a visiting scientist at Ecole normale supérieure from September 2017 to October 2018, and won a Max Planck Institute research fellowship to visit the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden in April 2018.

For more details in general, please visit

🌟🌟 Research group

  • Rachel Kane is working with me and James Edwards on PDMP sampling in computational quantum field theory.
  • James Gulliford is working with me and Gareth Roberts on correlated dynamics at the BKT transition and optimal PDMP dynamics at the stat-phys/Bayes-comp interface.

🤝💼 Vacancies

  • I have a HetSys PhD project advertised for 2025-26 entry. The project will develop novel simulation algorithms for sampling from multimodal energy landscapes, with immediate applications to polymer models. Informal enquiries to michael DOT faulkner AT warwick DOT ac DOT uk are welcome.

📫 Contact

  • Email me at michael DOT faulkner AT warwick DOT ac DOT uk
  • Informal enquiries regarding future projects and positions to michael.faulkner [AT] warwick.ac.uk are welcome.