About

Hi! I’m Mike, a PhD student working under Dr. Chris Matzner at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto.

My Work and Research Interests

I’m interested in theoretical astrophysics, and I am particularly interested in non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and plasmas. I like to walk the line and bridge the gap between pure theoretical and computational work. During my undergraduate studies with Dr. David Clarke, I developed a theoretical model for multifluid ambipolar diffusion with realistic ionization and associated energy and momentum transfer. Before that, I dabbled in some statistical mechanics with Dr. Geoffrey Lee-Dadswell and developed a mathematical model of “chain-breaking” for “ding-a-ling” chains in a Lennard-Jones potential. Most recently, working with Dr. Hilding Neilson for my MSc, I developed a new host of algorithms for the astrophysical MHD code ZEUS-3D. These algorithms allow Zeus to simulate bow shocks formed during the interaction between a stellar wind and a local interstellar medium (ISM). These routines include the ability for Zeus to calculate the observed polarization signal (and more generally the Stokes parameters), assuming the case of optically thin Thomson scattering.

During my PhD, I plan to develop algorithms and theory using non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics and plasma physics to solve some unanswered questions in star formation.

Background and History

I was born and raised in New Waterford, on Cape Breton Island. As a Cape Bretoner, I have a strong love for our local culture, music, and heritage (you can learn more in general here, but if you’re really interested, you can grab a copy of the Cape Breton Dictionary here). In particular, I have a strong stance on unions and workers’ rights due to the history of my home town (the wikipedia article is a great place to start; however, it doesn’t do the full story justice) and what generations of families here have suffered through.

My mother, Kathy, was a stay-at-home mom for most of my life. After I graduated high school, she went back to work and became a teaching assistant in the local school system, working directly with students who have severe behavioural issues or special needs; she’s often given the most ‘difficult’ cases, though she wouldn’t refer to them like that, as others tend to! She has a background in child psychology and social work and is well-known in the local schools for her uncanny ability to educate students where all others fail. My father, Gerard, is a tradesman (now retired). He helped to build the Lingan generating station. Eventually, he was hired there and worked most of his career for Nova Scotia Power, which became a subsidiary of the Emera Corporation. I owe very much to my father, as he was adamant about breaking the cycle. From a very young age, he insisted that I use my brain and not my body to make a living. I have one sibling, my sister Mary (now Mary Fecho), who has two children; my nephew Ollie and my niece Nora.

I started my education at Greenfield Elementary in New Waterford (fun fact: I was part of the first class to go through grades primary to six after the school first opened). After Greenfield, I moved to Breton Education Centre in New Waterford from grades 7-12. I was always extremely bored in school and didn’t care much for it. I flew ‘under the radar’ of most teachers because I didn’t cause problems and always finished my work so I could hang out with my friends. It was in my grade 11 year when things started to change. There, I met my mathematics teacher, Colin Campbell, my physics teacher, Erin Morrorw, and a physics practice teacher, Mr. McGinnis (I don’t know his first name; we only called him by his last). For the first time in my education, these three teachers took an interest in me and challenged me to improve. This started a cascade of interest that ended up with Erin Morrow linking me to MIT OpenCourseWare physics with Walter Lewin, which I began to eat up. As silly as this sounds, I can recall googling “how to become a physicist” before leaving high school, but I ended up in Engineering at Cape Breton University (CBU) on the advice that I was “good at math and physics”, so “[I] should become an engineer”. At CBU, I was taught physics by Dr. Chris Cameron and Dr. Geoffrey Lee-Dadswell, and mathematics by Dr. Scott Rodney. In my second year at CBU, I fell so in love with physics and mathematics that I received permission from the Dean of Science to take seven courses simultaneously. Five of these courses were within the regular engineering program. The other two were upper-year mathematics courses for which I didn’t have the prerequisites. They were a tensor calculus course focused on fluid mechanics and a partial differential equations course I took concurrently with ordinary differential equations. After my second year, I moved on to Dalhousie University (DAL) engineering, where, after a few months, I couldn’t deny my want for physics any longer. I dropped out of engineering and joined the physics department at Saint Mary’s University (SMU).

I met several amazing teachers and physicists at SMU, but the person who influenced me most was Dr. David Clarke. I respect no one on Earth more than David and compare my teaching and learning experiences to his. He is one of the best educators I have ever known and probably the most difficult! Any course taken from David gave an ‘Ivy League’ education at a minimum! I enjoyed David’s courses so much that I did my honours research with him. After undergrad, I spent some time at TRIUMF (Canada’s National Particle Accelerator). Then, I returned to CBU, where I received my Bachelor of Education degree to pursue my passion for teaching and education. During the tail end of the pandemic, I taught high school at Cabot High in the Cape Breton Highlands, eventually leaving to return to my own graduate studies. I moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to work with Dr. Hilding Neilson at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) for my MSc in physics. Now, I currently live in Toronto to complete my PhD!

Hobbies and Interests

Looking at me, one would not expect it, but I was once an extremely talented kickboxer and practitioner of Uechi-Ryu Karate (in which I hold a second-degree black belt). I’ve dabbled in Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu and Judo, and if I could live two separate lives, one would be my current academic life, while the other would have been a career in combat sports (I was very close to choosing the latter). I had the great honour and privilege of being a student of Daniel MacDougall and Gilbert MacIntyre, both are eighth and seventh-degree black belts, respectively; the former of which was inducted into the Cape Breton Hall of Fame as a builder for his contribution to combat sports in Cape Breton.

In my culture, music is very important. I play the piano, saxophone, guitar, and a few percussion instruments which one would find in a concert band (bells, timpani, xylophone, etc.). On the piano, I mostly play traditional Cape Breton music, which I was taught by Mario Colosimo and the late, great Doug McPhee. However, my typical listening involves mostly metal from Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Avenged Sevenfold.

Other than that, I’m a gamer, a movie buff, and a lover of fantasy books and shows (Game of Thrones, The Wheel of Time, The Lord of the Rings, etc.). I’m also always trying to push my knowledge of computer science further.