Claire Maria Postlethwaite is an applied mathematician based in New Zealand, where she is a professor in applied mathematics at the University of Auckland and a principal investigator for Te Pūnaha Matatini.
[1] Her research involves heteroclinic networks in dynamical systems and delay differential equations, and their varied applications including neuroscience, evolutionary robotics,[2] animal migration,[3][4] and climate modelling.
Postlethwaite was a mathematics student at the University of Cambridge in England.
After earning a bachelor's degree in 2001 and taking Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in 2002, she completed her PhD at Cambridge in 2006.
[6] In 2011, the New Zealand Mathematical Society gave Postlethwaite their Early Career Research Award, in recognition of her "enormous progress in applying mathematics to the study of animal movement, and for her development of fundamental ideas in applied dynamical systems".