Research Statement:: I work in continuum mechanics and functional analysis to formulate and solve mass-transport problems which yield parabolic partial-differential equations. For doctoral research, I resolved a convection problem for a finite domain with Robin end conditions. Although the discontinuous lower boundary-condition and lower-order terms describing drift and decay complicated the solution, I was able to arrive at a Sturm-Liouville operator which led to a closed-form representation with an elegant function space. That work is summarized in Applied Mathematics Letters (http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/math.AP/0404234) and discussed more fully in my dissertation (http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-1107103-092611/).