Seminars and Colloquiums
for the week of September 15, 2008
Speakers:
Professor Philip Schaefer, Monday
Professor Jie Xiong, Monday
Mr. Marco Martinez, Tuesday
Math Grad Student Forum, Wednesday
Professor Carl Sundberg, Wednesday
Professor Bob Compton, Thursday
Professor Ricardo Nochetto, Friday
Dr. Ales Vavpetic, Friday
Monday, September 15
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS AND COMPUTATIONAL MATHEMATICS SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 309A
SPEAKER: Professor Philip Schaefer
TITLE: “Blow-up Phenomena in Nonlinear Parabolic Problems”
ABSTRACT: We consider some nonlinear initial-boundary value problems for parabolic PDEs and determine a lower bound for the blow-up time (when blow-up occurs) as well as sufficient conditions which imply blow-up does or does not occur. These results are obtained by means of differential inequalities on suitable auxiliary functions.
PROBABILITY SEMINAR
TIME: 10:10 – 11:00 a.m.
ROOM: Ayres 209A
SPEAKER: Professor Jie Xiong
TITLE: “Optimal Stopping with Reward Constraints”
Tuesday, September 16
MATH ECOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 10:10 – 10:50
ROOM: Ayres 205
SPEAKER: Marco Martinez
TITLE: “Introduction to Simple Epidemic Models”
Wednesday, September 17
Math Grad Student Forum
TIME: 3:30 p.m.
ROOM: 214
Research 101: Tools & Tips
Wondering what the research phase of your PhD is all about?
Join a panel of your fellow math grads & professors as they comment on the trials and tribulations of graduate level research. Specifically, they will discuss:
- How they chose their research advisor
- How they organize their research
- Tips for getting along with your research advisor
- How to get the most out of your graduate research experience
- And more!
Pizza will be served!!
ANALYSIS SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:30
ROOM: Ayres 309B
SPEAKER: Professor Carl Sundberg
TITLE: “Rank-One Perturbations of Self-Adjoint Operators, 4”
Thursday, September 18
JUNIOR COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:40
ROOM: Ayres 214
SPEAKER: Professor Bob Compton, UTK Chemistry/Physics
TITLE: “The title is "Fullerenes: A new allotrope of carbon”
ABSTRACT: In the early 1980’s the C_60 ^+ molecular ion curiously appeared in the mass spectra of graphite at the Exxon Laboratories. The same type of experiment in the Smalley lab at Rice enhanced the C_60 ^+ ion, leading his group to surmise that its structure was that of a truncated icosohedron. They dubbed it La@C_60 ^+ .
We now know that C_60 is one of an infinite number of closed cage carbon clusters called fullerenes after the American architect Buckminster Fuller. The dodecahedral C_20 is the smallest, but there is no limit to the size of larger fullerenes, which include the class of so-called carbon nanotubes. Fullerenes are made of interconnected five and six member carbon structures. From Euler’s theorem for closed polyhedra (vertices + faces = edges + 2) it is easy to show that all C_n fullerenes consist of 12 five member rings and n/2 – 10 six member rings. The most famous fullerene, C_60 , has 12 five member rings and 20 six member rings and resembles most soccer balls.
Friday, September 19
MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 214
SPEAKER: Professor Ricardo Nochetto, University of Maryland, College Park
TITLE: “Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Electrowetting on Dielectric with Contact Line Pinning”
ABSTRACT: Electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) refers to a parallel-plate micro-device that moves fluid droplets through electrically actuated surface tension effects. These devices have potential applications in biomedical `lab-on-a-chip' devices (automated DNA testing, cell separation) and controlled micro-fluidic transport (e.g. mixing and concentration control). We model the fluid dynamics using Hele-Shaw type equations (in 2-D) with a focus on including the relevant boundary phenomena. Specifically, we model contact line pinning as a static (Coulombic) friction effect that effectively becomes a variational inequality for the motion of the liquid-gas interface. We use mixed finite elements for space discretization and a semi-implicit time discretization of curvature based on an explicit representation of the interface. We analyze this approach, present simulations and compare them to experimental videos of EWOD driven droplets. These experiments exhibit droplet pinching and merging events and are reasonably captured by our approach. This is joint work with S. Walker, A. Bonito, and B. Shapiro.
Host: Ohannes Karakashian (contact the host for the speaker’s schedule)
TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 209A
SPEAKER: Ales Vavpetic (University of Ljubljana)
TITLE: “On Gropes and Grope Groups”
If you are interested in giving or arranging a talk for one of our seminars or colloquiums, please review our calendar.
If you have questions, or a date you would like to confirm, please contact Dr. Steve Wise.
Week of:
Past notices:
Seminars from 2007-2008 academic year
Seminars from 2006-2007 academic year