AMUSE
Welcome to the home page of the
Applied Mathematics Undergraduate SEminar (AMUSE)
"When am I ever going to use this?"
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce undergraduates to
applications of mathematics: finance, engineering, biology, physics.
It is attended by undergraduates at all levels, as well as
occasional graduate students and faculty.
Talks by faculty, graduate students, and professionals are
generally in the ballpark of 45-55 minutes long, which leaves plenty
of time for questions. The first 15-20 minutes of a talk should be
accessible to freshmen students in their first year of calculus. If
the entire talk can be made accessible to freshmen, that is much
appreciated. We can also split the hour so that two people can
speak.
AMUSE is also happy to host undergraduate student talks that are
accessible to this audience. These talks are often the highlight of
the semester, and we hope they encourage more undergraduates to get
involved with research! Generally we schedule several students to
speak in one evening, so each one only needs to speak for 10-15
minutes.
If you would like to speak, or have suggestions for a speaker that
would give an engaging talk to an undergraduate audience, please
email Peter Jantsch, pjantsch "at" math.tamu.edu.
If you would like to involve undergraduates in your research
program, we'd love to have you introduce them to your topic via this
seminar.
| |
Date
Time |
Location | Speaker |
Title – click for abstract |
 |
09/13
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Andrea Bonito
Texas A&M University |
Curved Origami
Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper.
Since the famous Japanese crane described in the first known book on the topic (1797), the techniques and complexity of origami designs increased at an exponential rate. While originally for pure decorative purposes, the development of its mathematical language and theory paved the way for many applications in engineering science but also in natural science, computer visualization and architecture. The property exploited in most applications is their sheet-like behaviors when deployed while having the ability to fold to take a reduced amount of space when transported.
In this talk, we explore the effects of non-necessarily straight creases forcing the folded paper to bend. These curved origami received recently significant attentions from the scientific community exploiting the fascinating variety of shapes they can exhibit, their ability to produce rigid configurations and flapping mechanisms, their capacity to undergo large deformations using a small amount of energy, and their applicability at small and large scales alike. We discuss in a simpler context how to mathematically model the folding processes, derive properties of the folded configurations, and present numerical simulations of more complex situations with applications in art, math biology, space exploration and other. |
|
09/27
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Suhan Zhong
Texas A&M University |
Distributionally Robust Optimization with Moment Ambiguity Sets
In this talk, we introduce distributionally robust optimization when the ambiguity set is given by moments for the distributions. The objective and constraints are given by polynomials in decision variables. We reformulate the DRO with equivalent moment conic constraints. Under some general assumptions, we prove the DRO is equivalent to a linear optimization problem with moment and psd polynomial cones. A Moment-SOS relaxation method is proposed to solve it. Its asymptotic and finite convergence are shown under certain assumptions. |
|
10/04
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Patricia Alonso Ruiz
Texas A&M University |
How can one write the heat equation on a fractal?
As the name refers to, the classical heat equation models the spread of heat inside of an object. The solution is a function whose input is a moment in time and a point of the object, and outputs the temperature at that specific time and point of the object.
To write down the heat equation we need in particular to know how to take the second (partial) derivative of a function with respect to its space variable (the object). But what if the object where the heat spreads is fractal? How do we take that derivative? We will explore these questions in this talk by making a connection with electric network theory on a prototype fractal called the Sierpinski gasket. |
|
10/18
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Edriss Titi
Texas A&M University |
Mathematics of Turbulent Flows: A Million Dollar Problem!
Turbulence is a classical physical phenomenon that has been a great challenge to mathematicians, physicists, engineers and computational scientists. In the end of the last century, chaos theory was developed to explore similar phenomena that occur in a wide range of applied sciences, but the eyes have always been on the big ball – Turbulence. Controlling and identifying the onset of turbulence have a great economic and industrial impact ranging from reducing the drag on cars and commercial airplanes to better design of fuel engines, and weather and climate predictions.
It is widely accepted by the scientific community that turbulent flows are governed by the Navier-Stokes equations, for large Reynolds numbers, i.e. when the nonlinear advective effects dominate the linear viscous effects (internal friction within the fluids) in the Navier-Stokes equations. As such, the Navier-Stokes equations form the main building block in any fluid model, in particular in global climate models. Whether the solutions to the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations remain smooth, indefinitely in time, is one of the most challenging mathematical problems. Therefore, by the turn of the millennium, it was identified by the Clay Institute of Mathematics as one of the seven most outstanding Millennium Problems in mathematics, and it has set one million US dollars prize for solving it. Notably, reliable computer simulations of turbulent flows is way out of reach even for the most powerful state-of-the art supercomputers. In this talk I will describe, using layman language, the main challenges that the different scientific communities are facing while attempting to attack this problem. In particular, I will emphasize the mathematical point of view of turbulence. |
|
10/25
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Chia-Yu Chang and Madison Sheridan
Texas A&M University |
TBA
TBA |
|
11/01
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Jonas Lührmann
Texas A&M University |
TBA
TBA |
|
11/15
6:00pm |
BLOC 302 |
Wencai Liu
Texas A&M University |
TBA
TBA |
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