Professor Weinan E   Peking University and Princeton University

Abstract: Many important dynamic processes in physics, biology, chemistry and material science can be viewed as being rare events. These events are difficult to model due to the disparity of the time scales involved. From an abstract viewpoint, this can be formulated as the problem of navigating a system over its energy landscape. We will discuss the theoretical framework for describing such events, as well as the numerical algorithms that have been developed. We will discuss applications to diffusion, nano-indentation, dynamics of dislocations, etc.

About the Speaker: Weinan E (鄂维南) completed his undergraduate studies in the Department of Mathematics at University of Science and Technology of China in 1982, and his master degree in Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science at Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1985. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Mathematics at University of California, Los Angeles in 1989. He is known for his work in applied mathematics, with applications to fluid mechanics and material science. In addition, he has worked on multiscale modeling and the study of rare events. He has also made contributions to homogenization theory, theoretical models of turbulence, stochastic partial differential equations, electronic structure analysis, multiscale methods, computational fluid dynamics, and weak KAM theory. He is currently a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University, and the Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research at Peking University. He was elected as a fellow of Institute of Physics in 2005, a fellow of SIAM in 2009, and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011. He was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians (2002), and at Annual Meeting of the American Mathematical Society (2003).