Événement

Inverse Problems and Harry Potter's Cloak (An ICERM Public Lecture)

Members of the community are invited to attend an ICERM public lecture that will explore how the mathematical concept of inverse problems arises in all fields of science and technology.

Dr. Uhlmann will begin his talk by describing various inverse problems that arise in several contexts. For example, human vision: from the measurements of scattered light that reach our retinas, our brains construct a detailed three-dimensional map of the world around us. Solving inverse problems is in fact how we obtain a large part of our information about the world we live in. In the second part of his talk, Dr. Uhlmann will discuss invisibility by addressing the question, "Can we make objects invisible?" This has been a subject of human fascination for millennia -- in Greek mythology, movies, science fiction, etc. -- including the legend of Perseus versus Medusa and the more recent Star Trek and Harry Potter stories. In the last 13 years or so, there have been several scientific efforts to achieve invisibility. Dr. Uhlmann will describe a simple and powerful proposal, the so-called transformation optics and the progress that has been made in achieving invisibility.

Dr. Gunther Uhlmann studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, gaining his Licenciatura degree in 1973. He continued his studies at MIT where he received a PhD in 1976. He has held postdoctoral positions at MIT, Harvard and NYU, including a Courant Instructorship at the Courant Institute from 1977-1978. In 1980, he became an Assistant Professor at MIT and later moved to the University of Washington in 1985. He has been the Walker Family Professor at the University of Washington since 2006, winning multiple awards and honors along the way. Since 2010, he has been on leave at the University of California, Irvine as the Excellence in Teaching Endowed Chair.

This public lecture will be held at the Wheeler School's Gilder Center for the Arts.

Reception from 5:15pm - 6:00pm
Auditorium doors open at 6:00pm
Lecture begins at 6:30pm

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are required.

This event is sponsored by Brown University's Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM).