The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is required in advance – book your seat via Eventbrite
A pre-lecture reception with tea, coffee and cakes will be held from 16:45 in the Huxley Common Room.
Abstract: How do flocks of birds or schools of fish appear to act as one self-aware organism? How do political or social movements spread across populations? And why do many of us continue to spend our commutes stationary in traffic jams?
Mathematics is guiding us towards answers. The behaviour displayed by each of these phenomenon is underpinned by similar mathematical structures describing self-organisation and collective behaviour. It’s a set of rules that brings together individuals unaware of the broader process they are partaking in, but as a group show collective determined, smart behaviour.
Professor Pierre Degond is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial who is interested in how to understand these ‘emergence phenomena’ from a mathematical perspective. In his lecture he will talk through his application of classical mathematical physics to a variety of exotic systems, addressing issues as diverse as designing efficient pedestrian infrastructures to improving artificial insemination success rates.
Biography: Pierre Degond is currently a Chair Professor in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London. Before joining the College, he was at the Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse in France where he held a Senior Researcher position from the French Research Centre CNRS.
Pierre Degond was trained at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and his first appointment was in Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau as a Junior Researcher at CNRS. He was then appointed as a full Professor in Ecole Normale Superieure of Cachan before joining back the CNRS in Toulouse where he founded the Applied Math group. He moved to Imperial College London in October 2013.
He is interested in collective dynamics, decision making and self-organization in complex systems arising from biology and social sciences. His methods combine analysis, asymptotic theory and multi-scale numerical techniques. His earlier interests were in plasma physics, rarefied gas dynamics and semiconductor modelling. For more on his research interests visit his Personal Web Page.
He has been awarded the Jacques-Louis Lions prize 2013 of the French Academy of Sciences and he is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder.