AMUSE

Date: April 22, 2015

Time: 6:00PM - 7:00PM

Location: BLOC 117

Speaker: Dr. Alan Demlow, Texas A&M University, Department of Mathematics

Title: Mathematical Modeling of a Zombie Infection Outbreak

Abstract: Zombie outbreaks are widely recognized in pop culture outlets as one of the greatest menaces facing our civilization in the upcoming century. (More respectable authorities often seem blithely unaware of the gravity of the threat, for some reason…) It is less widely known that ordinary differential equations can be used to model the dynamics of such outbreaks, and thus to create an effective plan to battle them. In order to understand the properties of zombies, we will first consult some primary source materials such as the movie “Night of the Living Dead". Then we’ll use differential equations to construct a model that predicts population shifts during a zombie outbreak. This will allow us to figure out who wins in the end, us or the zombies. The talk will be accessible to calculus students who understand that a derivative represents a rate of change.