Howard Rowlee Lecture Series 1998

The 1998 Howard Rowlee Lecture in Mathematics will be delivered by Avner Friedman, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, Director of the Minnesota Center for Industrial Mathematics and Member of the National Academy of Sciences. The title of Professor Friedman's talk is "What is Industrial Mathematics?" Professor Friedman will also give a colloquium talk entitled "Free Boundary Problems in Cell Biology."

What is Industrial Mathematics?

April 15, 1998, Burnett Hall 115, 4:00–5:00pm, Reception: 2:45–3:45, Burnett Hall 106.

The talk will begin with the concept of industrial mathematics. It will then describe a range of mathematical problems that came from industry. The mathematical models will be in areas ranging from photography to electro-photography, painting automobiles, semiconductor processing, and coating of tapes.

Additional Talks

Free Boundary Problems in Cell Biology

April 16, 1998, Oldfather 209, 3:30–4:30pm, Refreshments: 3:10–3:30, Oldfather Hall 807.

The talk will concern models in cell biology in which the growth of the cell is a time-dependent free boundary. The question is what is the limiting behavior of the free boundary as time increases to infinity. The first model is a growth of a tumor; another model is a ``protocell'' i.e., a single cell in which all the biological functions have been lumped together by a simple physical-chemical process. Both models are taken to be radially symmetric, but offer symmetry-breaking bifurcations.

Sponsored By: Department of Mathematics and UNL Research Council

The Howard Rowlee Lecture series is made possible through a generous donation by Mr. Howard E. Rowlee, Jr., who has established a fund at the University of Nebraska Foundation to support research in mathematics. The inaugural lectures in this series are also supported by the College of Arts and Sciences Discrete and Experimental Mathematics program and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. For further information about the Howard Rowlee Lecture please contact Steve Cohn. scohn@math.unl.edu

Avner Friedman