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/
The NSF funding was used to organize a conference "Inverse Problems and Spectral Theory" in October 17-19, 2014, held at Texas A&M University. Using the NSF funding as seed money, the organizers secured an additional $21,000 from different sources, including the IMA, the host department and research insitutes affiliated with the department. The NSF money was used primarily to bring distinguished speakers to the conference and to sponsor attendance of young researchers and researchers from under-represented groups. The conference had 16 speakers (including 4 distinguished female researchers) and was attended by 29 participants who received some sort of financial assitance, in addition to local and self-supported attendees. Of the supported participants, 25 were young researchers (undergraduate and graduate students, researchers within 5 years of completing their PhD), 8 were female, 5 classified themselves as members of underrepresented groups, 2 are disabled. The conference was structured to promote interaction between invited speakers and young researchers. Measures taken to facilitate this included: holding a poster session with compulsory attendance by invited speakers (prior to that, the posters were strategically placed on the route between the auditorium and refreshments room), on-location lunch and reduced price banquet tickets for students. The conference resulted in many lively discussions held after talks, during the refreshment breaks and in front of posters. As a "mixed theme" conference, it also encouraged interaction of researchers from two related, but separate areas, with many sharp questions asked after the talks and suggestions made.
