2013-05-16

Prof. Irene Fonseca gave a Lecture named “Variational Methods in Materials and Image Processing” on May, 13, 2013 at NCMIS.

In her lecture, he mentioned that several questions in applied analysis motivated by issues in computer vision, physics, materials sciences and other areas of engineering may be treated variationally leading to higher order problems and to models involving lower dimension density measures. Their study often requires state-of-the-art techniques, new ideas, and the introduction of innovative tools in partial differential equations, geometric measure theory, and the calculus of variations.

In her talk,  it was shown how some of these questions may be reduced to well understood first order problems, while in others the higher order terms play a fundamental role. Besides, Applications to phase transitions, to the equilibrium of foams under the action of surfactants, imaging, micromagnetics, thin films, and quantum dots were addressed.

Prof. Irene Fonseca is a Portuguese-American applied mathematician, the Mellon College of Science Professor of Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, where she directs the Center for Nonlinear Analysis. In 2011, Fonseca was elected president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Fonseca is a knight of the Order of Saint James of the Sword. In 2009, Fonseca was elected as a fellow of SIAM "for contributions to nonlinear partial differential equations and the calculus of variations". In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.