Plenary and Semi-Plenary Lectures
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| Title: |
| Macro and Micro Biomechanics by the Immersed Boundary Method |
| Lecturer: |
| Charles S. Peskin |
| Abstract: |
| The mechanics of life are those of a fiber-reinforced fluid. We are all mostly water, stitched together by immersed elastic fibers. The immersed boundary (IB) method is both an unconventional mathematical formulation of the fluid-structure interaction problem, and also a numerical scheme based on that formulation for the computer solution of the fluid-structure interaction equations. The key idea of the IB method is that immersed elastic material can be represented as a part of the fluid where additional forces, arising from the elastic stresses in the immersed material, are applied. The IB method can be employed on a wide range of spatial scales, from macroscopic problems such as cardiac fluid dynamics, to microscopic problems such as the osmotic pressure and flow generated by a single flexible polymer molecule confined within a tiny water-permeable vesicle. In the microscopic case, thermal fluctuations, simulated by random forces with carefully chosen statistics, play a crucial role. The lecture will be illustrated by computer generated animations showing the results obtained by macroscale IB simulation of the beating human heart, and by microscale IB simulation of an immersed Brownian Ratchet biomolecular motor. |
 Charles S. Peskin was born on April 15, 1946, in New York City. He studied Engineering at Harvard (A.B., 1968), and Physiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Ph.D., 1972). In 1973, he joined the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, where he is now a Silver Professor of Mathematics and Neural Science. He is also currently an A.D. White Professor-at-Large of Cornell University.
Peskin's honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (1983-1988), the Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology (NYC, 1994), and the George David Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics (AMS/SIAM, 2003). He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (1992), of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994), and of the New York Academy of Sciences (1998); and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1995) and of the Institute of Medicine (2000).
Peskin's field of research is the application of mathematics and computing to medicine and biology, especially in the areas of heart physiology, neural science, and biomolecular motors. He is especially known for the immersed boundary method, a general computational framework for problems of fluid-structure interaction, like that posed by the mechanics of the human heart. |
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