This is a Career Advancement Award under the sponsorship of Research Opportunities for Women. Professor Hughes is an established, solid researcher in operator theory and partial differential equations. The goal of the present project is to apply the methods of functional analysis and operator theory to analyze non-selfadjoint and non-spectral operators that arise in the equations of transport theory. The proposed research would result in new, physically relevant applications of semigroups of unbounded operators to the applied mathematics and mathematical physics associated with transport phenomena; for example, neutron transport theory. Professor Hughes will broaden her knowledge of these applications by communication with the researchers at the Center for Transport Phenomena at VPI.
