(above) a virtual reality headset in use as part of the third workshop of the "Mathematical design of new materials" programme.

INI NEWS BULLETIN
May 2019

Dear friends, associates and supporters of INI,

Welcome to the May 2019 edition of our monthly news bulletin. In this release you will find the following 10 stories:

1. INTERVIEW: read Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow Professor Donatella Marini's thoughts on virtual element methods, talented women and collaborative working.
2. PODCAST OF THE MONTH: Professor Irene Fonseca (Carnegie Mellon) tells INI all about the power of academic interactions, the obligations placed upon high-achieving female mathematicians, a love of painting and being knighted by the "Military Order of St James of the Sword".
3. BONUS PODCAST: in between seminars, Professor Xian Chen (Hong Kong) spoke to INI about interactions between the fields of mathematics and mechanics, potential outcomes of such activity and the popularity of interdisciplinary events in general.
4. VIDEO: watch footage of Professor Irene Fonseca's Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow talk: "Variational Methods in Image Processing and in the Mathematical Analysis of Novel Advanced Materials".
5. VIDEO: watch footage of Professor Eddie Anderson (Sydney)'s Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow talk: "What do we agree on when we disagree? Forward contracts with private forecasts".
6. VIDEO: watch footage of Professor Ronald DeVore (Texas A&M)'s Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow talk: "Optimality of Algorithms for Approximation/Computation".
7. ROTHSCHILD LECTURE: a preview of Professor Graeme Milton (Utah)'s forthcoming talk: "Metamaterials: composite materials with striking properties" (Monday 3 June @16:00).
8. WORKSHOPS: details of three forthcoming workshops still open for applications.
9. ARTICLE: "Knitting is Coding", read this NYTimes article about recent "Mathematical design of new materials" workshop participant Elisabetta Matsumoto (Georgia Tech).
10. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: a guide to the coming month at INI.

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Contact: communications@newton.ac.uk

(above) a blackboard produced as part of the ongoing "The Fickle Heart" programme.

1. INTERVIEW: Kirk Fellow Professor Donatella Marini's thoughts on virtual element methods, talented women and collaborative working

Launched in January 2019, the Isaac Newton Institute now proudly hosts the “Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellowship” (KDVF) scheme. Designed to support and promote underrepresented groups in mathematics, the recipients so far are all female mathematicians of the highest regard.

In the third of a series of interviews, we spoke to the Kirk Fellow for "Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations” (GCS) programme Professor Donatella Marini (Pavia) about her speciality in "virtual element methods", her thoughts on talented women and the realities and rewards of collaborative working.

Links to interviews with other Kirk Fellowship figures can be found at the bottom of the article.

2. PODCAST OF THE MONTH: Kirk Fellow Professor Irene Fonseca tells INI about the power of academic interactions a love of painting and life as a "Dame".

Launched in March 2019, the INI podcast series aims to highlight the diverse people and explore the many interconnected topics linked to the Institute's activities.

In this latest episode we spoke to Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow Professor Irene Fonseca (Carnegie Mellon). In it, she tells INI all about the power of academic interactions, the obligations placed upon high-achieving female mathematicians, a love of painting and being knighted by the "Military Order of St James of the Sword".

00:00 – Introduction and recent activities 
02:35 – Pittsburgh, Portugal and a career overview 
03:40 – The benefits of academic travel 
06:40 – Being President of SIAM, encouraging engagement 
08:10 – The “Mathematical design of new materials” (DNM) programme and the “exceptional” involvement of women 
12:28 – The power of intra- and inter-disciplinary interactions 
15:15 – Exciting research prospects: composite materials and material defects 
18:21 – Feelings about the “Kirk Visiting Distinguished Fellowship” scheme, the “highlighting” of women in mathematics and ways to redress the gender imbalance 
26:05 – Too many obligations can be a burden, but there is always choice 
28:36 – The Kirk Fellowship keynote talk 
32:09 – Surprise #1: before mathematics there was painting 
35:25 - Surprise #2: receiving a knighthood, the “Military Order of St James of the Sword” technically being a “Dame” 

3. BONUS PODCAST: Professor Xian Chen (Hong Kong) speaks to INI about the popularity of interdisciplinary events.

Scheduled to run until 28 June, the six-month "Mathematical design of new materials" programme is now approaching its closing stages.

In a short break between seminars of its third workshop , co-organiser Professor Xian Chen (Hong Kong) spoke to INI about interactions between the fields of mathematics and mechanics, potential outcomes of such activity and the popularity of interdisciplinary events in general.

00:00 – Introductions 
01:00 – Is “The mathematical design of new materials” (DNM) a particularly applied programme? 
02:10 – Interactions between mathematics and mechanics, using maths to predict material behaviours 
03:22 – Potential outcomes from DNM, from scientific to collaborative 
05:00 – What are “new materials”? 
07:00 – Drawing crowds from across Cambridge’s Mathematics campus 
08:40 – Life in Cambridge: surviving the winter months, and attending a programme with a two-year-old daughter

4. VIDEO: watch footage of Professor Fonseca's Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow talk

On Friday 10 May Professor Irene Fonseca delivered her Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow lecture "Variational Methods in Image Processing and in the Mathematical Analysis of Novel Advanced Materials".

The talk's abstract and a link to the streamable recording follow below.
 

"In this talk we will use variational models involving density measures of different dimensionality to study training/learning schemes for a novel class of image-processing operators that provides a unified approach to the standard regularizers and PDE-based approaches to image denoising. To illustrate the relevance of similar bulk-surface energy models in the study of novel materials, we will analyze the onset of man-made nanocrystals of semiconducting materials (quantum dots). Their formation and assembly patterns play a central role in nanotechnology, and in particular in the optoelectronic properties of semiconductors. Changing the dots' size and shape gives rise to many applications that permeate our daily lives. As the creation of quantum dots evolves with time, materials defects appear and these may strongly influence material properties, including rigidity and conductivity. The regularity and evolution of the quantum dots shapes, and the nucleation and motion of dislocations will be addressed".

5. VIDEO: watch footage of Professor Eddie Anderson (Sydney)'s Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow talk.

On Monday 29 April Professor Eddie Anderson delivered his Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow lecture "What do we agree on when we disagree? Forward contracts with private forecasts".

The talk's abstract and a link to the streamable recording follow below.

"Forward contracts are used for hedging purposes when firms operate in a spot market. What will happen when firms have different views on the future distribution of prices and are risk averse? We discuss different ways in which two firms may agree on a bilateral forward contract: either through direct negotiation using the ideas of a Nash bargaining solution, or through a broker. We discuss a type of equilibrium in which each firm offers a supply function linking quantities and prices, and the clearing price and quantity for the forward contracts are determined from the intersection. Each firm may also be able to use the offer of the other firm to augment its own information about the future price".

6. VIDEO: watch footage of Professor Ronald DeVore (Texas A&M)'s Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow talk.

On Tuesday 21 May Professor Ronald DeVore delivered his Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow lecture "Optimality of Algorithms for Approximation/Computation".

A link to the streamable recording follows below.

7. ROTHSCHILD LECTURE: a preview of Professor Graeme Milton (Utah)'s forthcoming talk: "Metamaterials: composite materials with striking properties" (Monday 3 June @16:00)

On Monday 3 June at 16:00, Professor Graeme Milton will be delivering his Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow lecture "Metamaterials: composite materials with striking properties".

The talk is a public-facing keynote talk and all are welcome to attend. It will take place in INI's Seminar Room 1, and those who cannot make it in person can watch it streamed live via this link. An abstract of the talk follows below.
 

"Sometimes the properties of a composite are completely unlike those of the constituent materials, even when the structure is small compared to the wavelength: these composites are called metamaterials. Classic examples include bubbly fluids and stained glass windows made from suspensions of metal particles in glass. Other examples include metamaterials with negative thermal expansion made from materials all having positive thermal expansion; metamaterials with negative and/or possibly anisotropic mass density over a range of frequencies; metamaterials that get fatter as they are stretched (having a negative Poisson's ratio); materials with artificial and possibly negative magnetic permeability. The list goes on. Recent attention has been directed to space-time microstructures where the material moduli vary in both space and time. We will review some of the progress that has been made. One particular class of elastic metamaterials, known as pentamodes, has proved useful for guiding stress. Cable networks can also guide stress. It turns out that essentially any cable network under tension, and supporting a given loading, can be replaced by one in which at most four cables meet at any junction. Like pentamodes, these can support, up to a constant factor, only one stress field. Thus by tightening just one cable one gets the desired forces at all the terminal nodes. This last work is joint with Guy Bouchitte, Ornella Mattei and Pierre Seppecher".

8. WORKSHOPS: three forthcoming workshops still open for applications.

The following three workshops (associated with the "Bringing pure and applied analysis together via the Wiener-Hopf technique, its generalisations and applications" (WHT), "Complex analysis: techniques, applications and computations" (CAT) and "Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations" (GCS) programmes) are soon to close their window for applications.

We would advise any prospective participants to register their interest as soon as possible.

WHTW01 "Factorisation of matrix functions: New techniques and applications"
> Click here to apply by 2 June 2019 http://www.newton.ac.uk/event/whtw01

CATW01 "The complex analysis toolbox: new techniques and perspectives"
> Click here to apply by 9 June 2019 http://www.newton.ac.uk/event/catw01

GCSW02 "Structure preservation and general relativity"
> Click here to apply by 23 june 2019 http://www.newton.ac.uk/event/gcsw02

9. ARTICLE: "Knitting is Coding", read this NYTimes article about recent "Mathematical design of new materials" workshop participant Elisabetta Matsumoto (Georgia Tech).

Elisabetta Matsumoto, Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, recently attended the INI workshop "Optimal design of soft matter - including a celebration of Women in Materials Science (WMS)" (13-17 May) as a participant.

Published on the final day of that workshop, she is also the subject of the following NYTimes article which discusses her aim to "investigate the mathematics and mechanics of 'the ancient technology known as knitting'".

10. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: looking forward to the month ahead at INI.

> Workshop: Uncertainty quantification for cardiac models 5-7 June 2019

> Workshop: New trends and challenges in the mathematics of optimal design 10-14 June 2019

> Workshop: Approximation, sampling, and compression in high dimensional problems 17-21 June 2019

See all forthcoming INI events here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/events/calendar

See all forthcoming INI seminars here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/events/seminars