Conference on Inverse Problems and Spectral Theory, October 17-19, 2014

Texas A&M University, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

The award supports the travel and local expenses of 23 participants in the conference "Inverse Problems and Spectral Theory," which will be held at the Texas A&M University, October 17-19, 2014. The primary goal of the conference is to facilitate cooperation between researchers working in various areas of inverse problems and spectral theory, and in applications of these techniques in physics, biomedicine, and engineering. The majority of the award funds are reserved to support the participation of junior mathematicians, graduate students, and women and other members of underrepresented groups. Both inverse problems and spectral theory have been rapidly developing during the last several decades, with a number of deep connections emerging between these areas of mathematics. Inverse Problems are problems in which causes for a desired or an observed effect are to be determined. They play an ever increasing role in medicine and biology, in search for oil and mineral deposits, in studying the earth's substructure and creating astrophysical images from telescope data, in finding cracks and interfaces within materials, and in homeland security applications. Spectral theory has been in the mainstream of mathematical development for a long time. It has led to fascinating developments in various areas of science and engineering and the research in this field is still in an extremely active phase. The interaction between the two fields have given rise to a special subclass of problems, the inverse spectral problems. However, those are only one aspect of the deep connection between inverse problems and spectral theory and spectral-theoretical methods find many applications in seemingly unrelated inverse problems. For example, significant progress in studying some of the emerging multi-physics modalities of medical imaging was achieved through the study of the spectral properties of the operators governing the wave propagation in the living tissue. The supported conference will feature invited lectures from leading specialists in Inverse Problems and Spectral Theory, with special emphasis on the interaction of the two fields. Conference web site: www.math.tamu.edu/~berko/ipst/