This workshop highlights recent developments and future directions in the field of nonlinear dynamics, with an emphasis on fluid processes. This is an interdisciplinary field that not only addresses significant issues of fundamental scientific importance, but also involves numerous applications to many technical problems facing society today. The workshop will bring together people with wide interests in nonlinear dynamics in a small, intimate setting that is conducive to one-on-one and small-group interactions. A major emphasis is to provide young investigators (undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows) with an opportunity to learn about the range of studies being done by leading experts in the field. Another reason for this workshop is to highlight the value of research at undergraduate institutions and research experiences for undergraduates. In fact, a few of the invited speakers are currently at predominately-undergraduate institutions, and several speakers at research institutions also work frequently with undergraduates. The NSF grant will provide stipends to help cover the expenses for students and postdocs who are attending the workshop.
This $5,000 grant supported a workshop titled "Nonlinear Dynamics and Fluid Instabilities in the 21st Century" which was held at Haverford College on May 19-20, 2011. This workshop highlighted recent developments and future directions in the field of nonlinear dynamics, with an emphasis on fluid processes. This is an interdisciplinary field that not only addresses significant issues of fundamental scientific importance, but also involves numerous applications to many technical problems facing society today. The workshop brought together people with wide interests in nonlinear dynamics in a small, intimate setting that was conducive to one-on-one and small-group interactions. A major emphasis was to provide young investigators (undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows) with an opportunity to learn about the range of studies being done by leading experts in the field. Another reason for this workshop was to highlight the value of research at undergraduate institutions and research experiences for undergraduates. In fact, a few of the invited speakers are currently at predominately-undergraduate institutions, and several speakers at R1 institutions also work frequently with undergraduates. The workshop was attended by 140 people, about half of which were junior investigators (postdocs, graduate students and undergraduate students). The NSF grant helped fund stipends for 35 of the students, enabling them to attend this workshop. Topics discussed at this conference included: • Complex fluids, including colloidal systems • Turbulence and turbulent mixing • Waves and wave-particle interactions • Granular flows, including jamming phenomena • Multiphase flow dynamics • Dynamics of neural systems • Dynamics of bacterial suspensions • Instabilities in viscous flows • Low Reynolds number locomotion • Chaotic fluid mixing • Control of nonlinear systems • Advection-reaction-diffusion processes • Geophysical flow dynamics • Microfluidic flows and mixing • Biological networks These are all topics with potentially significant applications that could benefit society with a wide range of problems such as pollution control, miniaturization of medical processes, mining and processing of materials on the moon and asteroids, developing an understanding of the spreading of diseases, weather prediction, and propulsion systems.
