Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The Workshop on Dynamics and Control is part of the Georgia Tech Mathematics and Applications Portal (GT-MAP) Seminars series, organized by Sung Ha Kang . Speakers come from different units of Georgia Tech.

The workshop will launch the thematic semesters on Dynamics in Fall 2017 and Control in Spring 2018 for GT-MAP activities.This is a two-day workshop, the first day focusing on the theme of Dynamics, and the second day focusing on the theme of Control. Light refreshments will be served througout the event.

The workshop will be held in Klaus Advanced Computing Building, Room 2447. More information is available at http://gtmap.gatech.edu/events/gt-map-workshop-dynamics-and-control

Here is the tentative schedule  and PROGRAM 

Thursday Aug 17

9:30-10:20 Chethan Pandarinath (GT BME) on "High performance brain-machine interfaces through innovations in control algorithm design"

10:20-10:40 coffee break

10:40-11:30 Daniel Goldman (GT Physics)

11:30-12:20 Sam Brown (GT Bio Sci.) on "Effective and evolutionarily robust infection control"

12:20-1:50 lunch break

1:50-2:40 Matthew McDowell (GT ME) on "In situ Characterization of Dynamic Processes in
Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage"

2:40-3:30 Jorge Laval (GT CE)

3:30-3:50 coffee break

3:50-4:40 Martin Short (GT Math) on "Modeling and predicting urban crime – How data
assimilation helps bridge the gap between stochastic and continuous models"

Friday Aug 18

9:30-10:20 Eric Feron (GT AE) on "The growing need for proofs in Aerospace Information
systems"

10:20-10:40 coffee break

10:40-11:30 Evangelos Theodorou (GT AE)

11:30-12:20 Fumin Zhang (ECE) on "Learning and Predicting Human Intentions Through
Interactions"

12:20-1:50 lunch break

1:50-2:40 Panos Tsiotras (GT AE) on "Computing Optimal Trajectories: From Continuous to
Discrete and from Deterministic to Stochastic and Back"

2:40-3:30 Marcus J. Holzinger (GT AE)

3:30-3:50 coffee break

3:50-4:40 Martha Grover (GT Chem Bio Eng) on "Crystallization Control using Dynamic Programming"

Please feel free to join us.  No need to register.

Light refreshments will be served before the lecture.

Simulations of virtual materials in movie special effects, as well as virtual surgery, require some applications of scientific computing for solid and fluid mechanics problems. Both movie special effects and virtual surgery demand physically realistic dynamics for things like water, smoke, fire, and soft tissues. For these, new algorithms are required. Joseph M. Teran will discuss the simulation techniques required and will share some recent results, such as:

• simulated surgical repair of biomechanical soft tissues
• extreme deformation of elastic objects with contact
• high-resolution incompressible flow
• clothing and hair dynamics

He will discuss the algorithm used to simulate the dynamics in the Disney animated film "Frozen."

About the Speaker

Joseph M. Teran is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focus is numerical methods for partial differential equations arising in classical physics, including

• computational solids and fluids
• multi-material interactions
• fracture dynamics
• computational biomechanics

Exciting applications of his work arise in virtual surgery and movie special effects for Walt Disney Animation. 

Teran received a 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation and a 2010 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research. In 2008, Discover Magazine named Teran one of the 50 "Best Brains in Science." 

About Frontiers in Science Lectures

Lectures in this series are intended to inform, engage, and inspire students, faculty, staff, and the public on developments, breakthroughs, and topics of general interest in the sciences and mathematics. Lecturers tailor their talks for nonexpert audiences. 

Mathematics Employment Experience for High School Students, July 10-14, School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech.

Eight students and two teachers from Creekside and Westlake High Schools will compute sunrise and sunset times and work on related mathematics problems.

Link: http://www.cos.gatech.edu/hg/item/591675

EDITOR'S NOTE: This entry has been modified to reflect changes in scope, time, and venue.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs provide opportunities for undergraduate students to work closely with faculty and other researchers on a real-world research topic.

The REU program organized by School of Mathematics Professor Michael Lacey aims not only to provide research experience to undergraduates, but also to train postdoctoral fellows to design a program of research study, select students, and supervise students’ research over an extended period.

The Georgia Tech postdoctoral fellows in the REU program are Robert Kesler, Michael Northington, and Andre de Souza. They will be mentoring seven students from Alabama and Georgia Universities:

•Amadou Buh, Perimeter College at Georgia State University

•Korynn Claiborne, Alabama State University

•Samuel Hood, Morehouse College

•Bryson Kagy, Georgia Institute of Technology

•Allison Madson, Georgia Tech

•Jade Redding, Alabama State University

•Emily Smith, Agnes Scott College

At the poster session, these students are joined by 13 others in the REU program directed by School of Mathematics Professor Igor Belegradek:

• Ken Adams, Georgia Tech
• Santana Afton, College of William and Mary
• Nicholas Barvinok, University of Michigan
• Catherine Chen, Georgia Tech
• Nhu Do, Mount Holyoke College
• Sam Friedman, University of Michigan
• Andrea, Martinez, Georgia Tech
• Rose McCarty, Georgia Tech
• Hunter Vallejos, Georgia Tech
• Yandi Wu, University of California, Berkeley
• Jun Xiang, Georgia Tech
• Queena Zhou, Georgia Tech
• Yihan Zhou, Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech is the site of the 2017 SIAM Conference on Applied Algebraic Geometry. This biennial meeting is an activity of the Activity Group in Applied Geometry of SIAM, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The SIAM Activity Group in Algebraic Geometry aims to bring together researchers who use algebraic geometry in industrial and applied mathematics.

Plenary talks will be livestreamed through the conference main page https://www.siam.org/meetings/ag17/.

"Algebraic geometry" is interpreted broadly to include at least algebraic geometry, commutative algebra, noncommutative algebra, symbolic and numeric computation, algebraic and geometric combinatorics, representation theory, and algebraic topology.

These methods have already seen applications in biology, coding theory, cryptography, combustion, computational geometry, computer graphics, quantum computing, control theory, geometric design, complexity theory, machine learning, nonlinear partial differential equations, optimization, robotics, and statistics.

School of Mathematics professors Greg Blekherman, Anton Leykin, and Josephine Yu lead the local organizing committee.  

Speakers from Georgia Tech include School of Mathematics graduate students Jose Acevedo and Tim Duff; postdoctoral fellows Torin Greenwood, and Heather Smith; and professors Greg Blekherman, Stavros Garoufalidis, Prasad Tetali, and Josephine Yu. They are joined by School of Physics Assistant Professor Elisabetta Matsumoto and Santanu Dey, an associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Complete information is available at https://www.siam.org/meetings/ag17/.

Online registration is available through July 5, 2017.

Registration information is at https://www.siam.org/meetings/ag17/reginfo.php

Register now at https://www.siam.org/meetings/ag17/regform.php

The TraX project is an inter-university effort, involving researchers from 8 universities, aimed at elucidating the geometric structures in phase space which determine the speed and nature of chemical reactions and how they are affected by external influences such as light pulses or noise.

The effort is highly interdisciplinary and it involves Mathematics (Dynamical Systems), Numerical Computations, Physics, and Chemistry all working together to understand experimental phenomena and make predictions.

The project has been funded by the European Research Council, Mathematics Division for 4 years and it will sponsor visits of European scientists to GT and provide opportunities for graduate students to collaborate in this area.

The 2017 student awards will be presented during the School of Mathematic’s Annual Award ceremony on April 20th. The ceremony recognizes outstanding students who have achieved academic and scholastic excellence in the School. Research and Teaching awards will be presented to Graduate and Undergraduate Students

Date: Thursday, April 20th, 2017

Time: 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Location: Skiles Atrium

Please join us to honor these students.

View prior Graduate Student Awards and Honors.

Club Math and Pi Mu Epsilon present: From Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: The Mathematics of Origami with origami master, Robert Lang. Robert J. Lang is recognized as one of the foremost origami artists in the world as well as a pioneer in computational origami and the development of formal design algorithms for folding. With a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech, he has, during the course of work at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spectra Diode Laboratories, and JDS Uniphase, authored or co-authored over 80 papers and 45 patents in lasers and optoelectronics as well as authoring, co-authoring, or editing 9 books and a CD-ROM on origami. He is a full-time artist and consultant on origami and its applications to engineering problems but moonlights in physics: from 2007-2010 as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

His work combines aspects of the Western school of mathematical origami design with the Eastern emphasis upon line and form to yield models that are at once distinctive, elegant, and challenging to fold. They have been shown in exhibitions in New York (Museum of Modern Art), Paris (Carrousel du Louvre), Salem (Peabody Essex Museum), San Diego (Mingei Museum of World Folk Art), and Kaga, Japan (Nippon Museum Of Origami), among others.

In 1992 Dr. Lang became the first Westerner ever invited to address the Nippon Origami Association’s annual meeting; he has since been an invited guest at international origami conventions around the world. He lectures widely on origami and its connections to mathematics, science, and technology, and teaches workshops on both artistic techniques and applications of folding in industrial design.

This event is free but reservations are required. Please sign in using the reservation form. 
Event Details
Monday, April 11, 2011
3:30pm-4:30pm Informal Folding Session: Skiles 236

5:00pm-6:00pm Presentation
Location: Student Success Center, Clary Theater

Monday, January 30 at 4 p.m. in the Student Center Theater

President Bud Peterson and Provost Rafael Bras will jointly address the academic faculty during a series of one-hour conversations that will include brief presentations followed by an open question and answer session with the audience.

Interested staff are also welcome to attend.

The 2016 Stelson's Lecture will be given by Dr. Gérard Ben Arous, a professor of mathematics and director of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.

Title: The Complexity of Random Functions of Many Variables

Date: August 31, 2016, 4:00 – 5:00 PM

Location: Klaus Advanced Computing Building, 801 Atlanic Drive, Room 1116

If you have any questions about the lecture or would like to meet with the speaker, contact Dr. Christian Houdré.

Abstract

A function of many variables, when chosen at random, is typically very complex. It has an exponentially large number of local minima or maxima, or critical points. It defines a very complex landscape, the topology of its level lines (for instance their Euler characteristic) is surprisingly complex. This complex picture is valid even in very simple cases, for random homogeneous polynomials of degree p larger than 2. This has important consequences. For instance trying to find the minimum value of such a function may thus be very difficult.

The mathematical tool suited to understand this complexity is the spectral theory of large random matrices. The classification of the different types of complexity has been understood for a few decades in the statistical physics of disordered media, and in particular spin-glasses, where the random functions may define the energy landscapes. It is also relevant in many other fields, including computer science and Machine learning. I will review recent work with collaborators in mathematics (A. Auffinger, J. Cerny) , statistical physics (C. Cammarota, G. Biroli, Y. Fyodorov, B. Khoruzenko), and computer science (Y. LeCun and his team at Facebook, A. Choromanska, L. Sagun among others), as well as recent work of E. Subag and E.Subag and O.Zeitouni.

About the Stelson Lecture Series

Thomas Stelson was a distinguished civil engineer who served as dean of Georgia Tech's College of Engineering from 1971 to 1974, as vice president for research from 1974 to 1988, and as executive vice president from 1988 to 1990. During the 70's and 80's, he oversaw a vast expansion in Tech's research expenditures during an era when Tech went from being primarily teaching-oriented university to a major research institution. Stelson helped the School of Mathematics create the Center for Dynamical Systems and Nonlinear Studies, and he endowed the School's Stelson lectures in 1988 in honor of his father, Hugh Stelson, who was a mathematician. Hugh Stelson earned his doctorate from the University of Iowa in 1930 and went on to teach at Kent State University and Michigan State University. He worked on problems related to interest rates, annuities, and numerical analysis.

Previous Stelson lectures are available to the public from the SMARTech repository.