About me

Julian Mak
Department of Ocean Science
HKUST
Clear Water Bay, Kowloon
Hong Kong


I was born in Hong Kong, although I have spent the majority of my life in the UK (except for one year in Israel). My over-arching area of interest is fluid dynamics and rotating stratified turbulence, mostly focusing on the ocean, though I maintain an interest in problems relating to the atmosphere, stars, giant planets, as well as plasma turbulence. See RESEARCH and PUBLICATIONS for more specific details.

In case you are interested, my name in traditional Chinese is written 麥晉朗 (the middle character is not 俊 as many people like to comment on).

Research positions

Tenure track faculty, Dept. of Ocean Sciences, HKUST
- Associate Professor (from Jul 2025)
- Assistant Professor (from Jul 2019)
Jul 2019 to date
Senior NOC fellow, National Oceanography Centre
Sep 2023 to date
- within the Marine Systems Modelling group
Post-doc, Dept. of Physics, University of Oxford
- Supervised by David Marshall and James Maddison
Oct 2017 to May 2019
Post-doc, School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh
- Supervised by James Maddison and David Marshall
Sep 2014 to Sep 2017
Post-doc, Dept. of Geosciences, Tel Aviv University
- Supervised by Nili Harnik and Eyal Heifetz
Oct 2013 to Sep 2014
Student fellow, ISIMA 2010, UC Santa Cruz
- Supervised by Pat Diamond
Jul 2014 to Aug 2014
PhD, Dept. of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds
- Supervised by David Hughes and Stephen Griffiths
Oct 2009 to Sep 2013
MMath, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, University of Durham
- Dissertation supervised by Miguel Moyers-Gonzalez
- EPSRC vacation bursary project supervised by Djoko Wirosoestisno (Summer 2008)
Oct 2005 to Jun 2009