Date/heure
20 mai 2016
14:00 - 15:00
Oratrice ou orateur
Leonid Berlyand
Catégorie d'évènement Séminaire EDP, Analyse et Applications (Metz)
Résumé
This is an introductory talk to mathematics of active biosystems. The goal is to illustrate by simple examples how  mathematics changes when transition from traditional physics/materials problems to PDEs in biology. Before jumping into mathematics we present experimental videos of striking biological phenomena that motivate our study. The talk consists of three parts. First we give a brief introduction to homogenization theory which is a powerful mathematical tool for studying multiscale problems. Next we describe a PDE model of collective behavior for swimming bacteria and present mathematical results on the effective viscosity of bacterial suspensions. Finally we present a phase field PDE model of a crawling cell on a substrate and describe its surprising features such as self-sustained motion (traveling wave solutions) and spontaneous breaking of symmetry. In conclusion, we briefly discuss the concept of interdisciplinary mathematics.