## Seminars and Colloquia by Series

### Dynamics of inertial particles with memory: an application of fractional calculus

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, November 17, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Recent experimental and numerical observations have shown the significance of the Basset--Boussinesq memory term on the dynamics of small spherical rigid particles (or inertial particles) suspended in an ambient fluid flow. These observations suggest an algebraic decay to an asymptotic state, as opposed to the exponential convergence in the absence of the memory term. I discuss the governing equations of motion for the inertial particles, i.e. the Maxey-Riley equation, including a fractional order derivative in time. Then I show that the observed algebraic decay is a universal property of the Maxey--Riley equation. Specifically, the particle velocity decays algebraically in time to a limit that is O(\epsilon)-close to the fluid velocity, where 0<\epsilon<<1 is proportional to the square of the ratio of the particle radius to the fluid characteristic length-scale. These results follows from a sharp analytic upper bound that we derive for the particle velocity.

### Math is in the eye of the beholder

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Friday, November 14, 2014 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
The medical imaging benefits from the advances in constructiveapproximation, orthogonal polynomials, Fourier and numerical analysis,statistics and other branches of mathematics. At the same time, the needs of the medical diagnostic technology pose new mathematical challenges. This talk surveys a few problems, some of them related to approximation theory, that have appeared in my collaboration with specialists studying some pathologies of the human eye, in particular, of the cornea, such as:- reconstruction of the shape of the cornea from the data collected bykeratoscopes- implementation of simple indices of corneal irregularity- fast and reliable computation of the through-focus characteristics of a human eye.

### Computational Multiphysics at Scale

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, November 3, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Dr. Matthew CalefLos Alamos National Lab
Observations of high energy density environments, from supernovae implosions/explosions to inertial confinement fusion, are determined by many different physical effects acting concurrently. For example, one set of equations will describe material motion, while another set will describe the spatial flow of energy. The relevant spatial and temporal scales can vary substantially. Since direct measurement is difficult if not impossible, and the relevant physics happen concurrently, computer simulation becomes an important tool to understand how emergent behavior depends on the constituent laws governing the evolution of the system. Further, computer simulation can provide a means to use observation to constrain underlying physical models. This talk shall examine the challenges associated with developing computational multiphysics simulation. In particular this talk will outline some of the physics, the relevant mathematical models, the associated algorithmic challenges, some of which are driven by emerging compute architectures. The problem as a whole can be formidable and an effective solution couples many disciplines together.

### Stochastic Nucleation and Growth

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, October 20, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Dr. Maria D'OrsognaCal State University Northridge
Given their ubiquity in physics, chemistry and materialsciences, cluster nucleation and growth have been extensively studied,often assuming infinitely large numbers of buildingblocks and unbounded cluster sizes. These assumptions lead to theuse of mass-action, mean field descriptions such as the well knownBecker Doering equations. In cellular biology, however, nucleationevents often take place in confined spaces, with a finite number ofcomponents, so that discrete and stochastic effects must be takeninto account. In this talk we examine finite sized homogeneousnucleation by considering a fully stochastic master equation, solvedvia Monte-Carlo simulations and via analytical insight. We findstriking differences between the mean cluster sizes obtained from ourdiscrete, stochastic treatment and those predicted by mean fieldones. We also study first assembly times and compare results obtained from processes where only monomer attachment anddetachment are allowed to those obtained from general coagulation-fragmentationevents between clusters of any size.

### An Alternating Direction Approximate Newton Algorithm for Ill-conditioned inverse Problems with Application to Parallel MRI

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, October 6, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Dr. Maryam Yashtini Georgia Tech Mathematics
An alternating direction approximate Newton method (ADAN) is developedfor solving inverse problems of the form$\min \{\phi(Bu) +1/2\norm{Au-f}_2^2\}$,where $\phi$ is a convex function, possibly nonsmooth,and $A$ and $B$ are matrices.Problems of this form arise in image reconstruction where$A$ is the matrix describing the imaging device, $f$ is themeasured data, $\phi$ is a regularization term, and $B$ is aderivative operator. The proposed algorithm is designed tohandle applications where $A$ is a large, dense ill conditionmatrix. The algorithm is based on the alternating directionmethod of multipliers (ADMM) and an approximation to Newton's method in which Newton's Hessian is replaced by a Barzilai-Borwein approximation. It is shown that ADAN converges to a solutionof the inverse problem; neither a line search nor an estimateof problem parameters, such as a Lipschitz constant, are required.Numerical results are provided using test problems fromparallel magnetic resonance imaging (PMRI).ADAN performed better than the other schemes that were tested.

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, September 29, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Dr. Manuela ManettaGeorgia Tech Mathematics
The distance of a nxn stable matrix to the set of unstable matrices, the so-called distance to instability, is a well-known measure of linear dynamical system stability. Existing techniques compute this quantity accurately but the cost is of the order of multiple SVDs of order n, which makes the method suitable to middle size problems. A new approach is presented, based on Newton's iteration applied to pseudospectral abscissa, whose implementation is obtained by discretization on differential equation for low-rank matrices, particularly suited for large sparse matrices.

### Weak Galerkin Finite Element Methods

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, September 22, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Dr. Chunmei Wang Georgia Tech Mathematics
Weak Galerkin finite element method is a new and efficient numerical method for solving PDEs which was first proposed by Junping Wang and Xiu Ye in 2011. The main idea of WG method is to introduce weak differential operators and apply them to the corresponding variational formulations to solve PDEs. In this talk, I will focus on the WG methods for biharmonic equations, maxwell equations and div-curl equations.

### Computation of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, September 8, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
We explain a method for the computation of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds (NHIM) in discrete dynamical systems.The method is based in finding a parameterization for the manifold formulating a functional equation. We solve the invariance equation using a Newton-like method taking advantage of the dynamics and the geometry of the invariant manifold and its invariant bundles. The method allows us to compute a NHIM and its internal dynamics, which is a-priori unknown.We implement this method to continue the invariant manifold with respect to parameters, and to explore different mechanisms of breakdown. This is a joint work with Alex Haro.

### Analysis and synthesis methods in compressive signal processing

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, April 28, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Deanna NeedellClaremont McKenna College
In this talk we will discuss results for robust signal reconstruction from random observations via synthesis and analysis methods in compressive signal processing (CSP). CSP is a new and exciting field which arose as an efficient alternative to traditional signal acquisition techniques. Using a (usually random) projection, signals are measured directly in compressed form, and methods are then needed to recover the signal from those measurements. Synthesis methods attempt to identify the low-dimensional representation of the signal directly, whereas analysis type methods reconstruct in signal space. We also discuss special cases including provable near-optimal reconstruction guarantees for total-variation minimization and new techniques in super-resolution.

### Variational Models and Algorthms for Restoration of Images

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, April 14, 2014 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Professor Ke ChenThe University of Liverpool, UK
Mathematical imaging is not only a multidisciplinary research area but also a major cross-disciplinesubject within mathematical sciences as image analysis techniques involve analysis, optimization, differential geometry and nonlinear partial differential equations, computational algorithms and numerical analysis.In this talk I first review various models and techniques in the variational frameworkthat are used for restoration of images. Then I discuss more recent work on i) choice of optimal coupling parameters for the TV model,ii) the blind deconvolution and iii) high order regularization models.This talk covers joint work with various collaborators in imaging including J. P. Zhang, T.F. Chan, R. H. Chan, B. Yu, L. Sun, F. L. Yang (China), C. Brito (Mexico), N. Chumchob (Thailand), M. Hintermuller (Germany), Y. Q. Dong (Denmark), X. C. Tai (Norway) etc.