Jezabel Curbelo

          Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - Departament de Matemàtiques

          IMTech. Institute of Mathematics of UPC-BarcelonaTech

          Centre de Recerca Matemàtica

          ETSEIB. Escola Tècnica Superior d'Enginyeria Industrial de Barcelona
          AVDA. DIAGONAL, 647,
          EDIFICI H. Office: 3.22
          08028 BARCELONA
          SPAIN

          E-mail: jezabel.curbelo[at]upc.edu

I am Professor ("Catedrática") at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Before that, I was "Ramón y Cajal" research fellow (UPC) (July 2020- June 2025), Visiting Assistant Researcher in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) (February - June 2019, 2020), and Assistant Professor ("Profesor Ayudante Doctor" 2016-2020) at Department of Mathematics, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

I also was a postdoc LabEX LIO at Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon : Terre, Planètes, Environnement (CNRS, ENS, Lyon1) in Lyon, France, Juan de la Cierva Formación Postdoc at Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Aeronáutica y del Espacio at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and PhD student in the JAE-Predoc fellowships program at Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas ICMAT and Teaching Assistant ("Profesora Ayudante" 2012-2014).

I co-organize the UB-UPC Dynamical Systems Seminar, please contact me if you want to give a talk.

I am an editor for Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, The EMS Magazine (European Mathematical Society) and Early Career Editor for Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena

I am Deputy Director of Research in the Department of Mathematics of the UPC and Science officer of NP6: Turbulence, Transport and Diffusion at the Nonlinear Processes in Geoscience division for the European Geosciences Union.

Awards

2025 Premio Nacional de Investigación Awarded annually to a Spanish mathematician or computer scientist under 40. (Spanish Government - MICIU)

2022 Leonardo fellowship (BBVA Foundation)

2020/2021 L'Oréal-Unesco "For Women in Science" award. L'Oréal España

2020 Antonio Valle SEMA Prize to Young Researchers. Best Spanish Applied Mathematician under 34 (SEMA- Sociedad Española de Matemática Aplicada)

2015 Donald L. Turcotte Award. American Geophysical Union (AGU) Nonlinear Geophysics Focus Group.

2015 "Vicent Caselles" award Best Spanish Mathematician under 30 (BBVA Foundation - RSME).

Research

My research focuses mainly on applied mathematics in geophysical fluids and related problems. More specifically in the simulation and modeling of the complicated processes underlying fluid motion and in the description of transport, mixing and stirring in the ocean and atmosphere from the standpoint of dynamical systems theory. I study fluid dynamics occurring in geophysical settings both from an analytical and fundamentally numerical point of view. In particular, I work in atmospheric and oceanic dynamics looking for lagrangian coherent structures that characterize the transport and I investigate fundamental behaviors of fluid processes in planetary mantles, where I analyze the convective motions. I also study the melting of Phase Change materials.

My research is supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación through CNS2023-144360, PID2021-122954NB-I00 and by the Fundación Ramón Areces

You can click here to get my papers

Teaching

Fall 2025: I am teaching Numerical Methods in the Bachelor's degreee in Industrial Technology Engineering at ETSEIB (the course material is here), Ordinary differential Equations in the Bachelor's degree of Mathematicas at FME (School of Mathematics and Statistics) and Mathematical Modelling with Partial Differential Equations in the Master's degree in Advanced Mathematics and Mathematical Engineering.

Outreach

New interview! SIGMA - Espacio Red leonardo FBBVA(Septiembre 2025). Jezabel Curbelo: "Temo que quien realmente tenga vocación para enseñar matemáticas en el instituto no consiga entrar a la carrera o se vaya a otro trabajo con un mejor salario"

I have written an article about the centennial of the publication of G.I. Taylor's paper entitled "Stability of a Viscous Liquid contained between Two Rotating Cylinders," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A, 223 (1923) in the newspaper "El País"

I am on the back cover of the newspaper "El País" (March 31, 2022) in the section "Conversaciones a la Contra (by Manuel Jabois)"

I am #científicaseinnovadoras Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación - Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT)

I am the month of March at the Canarian scientific women calendar 2021/2022 Government of the Canary Islands