The Study of Wave Interactions: Where Beautiful Mathematical Ideas Come Together
- Speaker
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Gigliola Staffilani, Ph.D.Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor, Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Presidential Lectures are free public colloquia centered on four main themes: Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Neuroscience and Autism Science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are intended to foster discourse and drive discovery among the broader NYC-area research community. We invite those interested in the topic to join us for this weekly lecture series.
Phenomena involving wave interactions happen at different scales and media. For example, gravitational waves ripple through space-time, ocean waves move through water and quantum particles behave like wave packets. These phenomena are difficult to study in a rigorous mathematical manner, but maybe because of this challenge, mathematicians have developed interdisciplinary approaches that are powerful and beautiful.
In this lecture, Gigliola Staffilani will describe some of these approaches. She will show, for example, how the need to understand certain multilinear and periodic interactions provided the tools necessary to prove a famous conjecture in number theory and how classical tools in probability provided the framework for viable theories behind certain deterministic counterexamples.
To attend this in-person event, you will need to register in advance and provide:
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- Eventbrite ticket confirmation email with QR code
- Simons Foundation Health Screening Questionnaire approval email
Entrance will not be granted without this documentation.
On-site registration will not be permitted. Walk-in entry will be denied.
About the Speaker
Staffilani has been the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2007. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Bologna in 1989 and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Following a Szegö assistant professorship at Stanford University, she had faculty appointments at Stanford, Princeton University and Brown University before joining the MIT mathematics faculty in 2002.
Staffilani is an analyst with a concentration on dispersive nonlinear partial differential equations. At Stanford, she received the Harold M. Bacon Memorial Teaching Award and the Frederick E. Terman Award for young faculty. She was a Sloan fellow from 2000 to 2002, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1995 and 2003, and a member of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2009.
She is an elected member of the Massachusetts Academy of Science, a fellow of the American Mathematical Society, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2017, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Simons Fellowship in Mathematics. In 2018 she received the MIT Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.