Organisers: Darryl Holm (Imperial), Karsten Kruse (Saarbrücken ), Peter Olmsted (Leeds), Len Pismen (Technion) and Uwe Thiele (Loughborough)
Programme Theme
This four month programme shall advance the mathematical modelling and
analysis of complex fluids and active media in situations involving
interface and contact line dynamics. It is focused on confined
systems involving various kinds of interfaces as, for instance, moving
or evaporating drops on substrates, vesicles, thin films, crawling and
swimming cells, biological membranes and tissues. Dynamical processes
of interest to the programme include as well surface induced phase
transitions, cell adhesion and locomotion on surfaces, and
bio-convection caused by active swimmers interacting with boundaries.
The involved complex behaviour is marked by the interplay of different
instabilities triggering hierarchical structure formation
processes. Theoretical approaches range from stochastic discrete
descriptions of processes on the nanoscale to deterministic continuum
descriptions of processes on the micro- or macroscopic scales. The
latter naturally connect to advances in the analysis of partial
differential equations for kinetic theory. Some attention will as
well be paid to multiscale analysis and computations.
The programme shall foster the development of advanced mathematical
descriptions of the coupling of the bulk dynamics of complex fluids
and active media with the dynamics of free surfaces, interfaces and
contact lines. Thereby the programme will initiate new collaborations
between applied mathematicians and the different communities of
physicists or engineers involved in biological physics, soft condensed
matter science, chemical/mechanical engineering, nano- and
microfluidics, and related fields. The programme combines research
seminars, embedded workshops and a summer school with a number of
short instructional courses. The latter will particularly allow
younger researchers to better integrate concepts of mathematical
modelling and non-equilibrium, nonlinear, and soft matter science into
the presently active research fields.
