Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Random and irregular growth is all around us. We see it in the form of cancer growth, bacterial infection, fluid flow through porous rock, and propagating flame fronts. Simple models for these processes originated in the '50s with percolation theory and have since given rise to many new models and interesting mathematics. I will introduce a few models (percolation, invasion percolation, first-passage percolation, diffusion-limited aggregation, ...), along with some of their basic properties.