Handling editor: Steve Schecter
by Carmen Chicone and Yuri Latushkin
The AIMS biannual conference series on dynamical systems and
differential equations started in May 1996 with a conference at
Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA (now
Missouri State University) and was continued at Shanghai Jiaotong
University, Shanghai, China in June 1998; Kennesaw State University,
Kennesaw, GA, USA in May 2000; University of North Carolina at
Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA in June 2002; California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA in June 2004; and University of
Poitiers, Poitiers, France in June 2006 with a record attendance of
700 mathematicians and scientists from five continents.
While the official attendance at this year's
conference at UT-Arlington was 658 participants, a record number of 47
special sessions were organized and 803 talks were presented.
(The full conference program is available:
http://aimsciences.org/AIMS-Conference/2008/.) It was a
large and successful meeting, due to the organization by the
Mathematics Department of the University of Texas at Arlington, the
sponsorship by the USA National Science Foundation, the University of
Texas at Arlington, and the University of North Carolina at
Wilmington, and the individual organizers listed below:
- The Scientific Committee: Shouchuan Hu (Chair), Jerry Bona, Alberto Bressan,
Adrian Constantin, Amadeu Delshams, Hiroshi Matano, Alain Miranville,
Wei-Ming Ni, N.S. Papageorgiou, Jianzhong Su, Jianping Zhu.
- Conference Coordinator: Xin Lu.
- Conference Organization Committee:
Jianzhong Su (Chair) , Jianping Zhu (Co-Chair), Tuncay Aktosun, Gaik Ambartsoumian,
Alain Bensoussan , Hristo V. Kojouharov, Cecelia Levings , Yue Liu , Peter Moore , Hua Shan.
- Global Organizing Committee: Shouchuan Hu (Chair), Julien
Arino, Francisco Balibrea , Mohamed Belhaq, Gunduz G. Caginalp, Xinli
Fu, Marty Golubitsky, Laszlo Hatvani, Hassan Hbid, Miaohua Jiang,
Peter Kloekden , Tibor Krisztin, Irena Lasiecka, Yuri Latushkin, Xin
Lu, Amy Novick-Cohen, Mitsuharu Otani R. Shivaji, Stefan Siegmund,
Atanas Stefanov, Jianzhong Su Saleh Tanveer, Weike Wang, Xiaoming
Wang, James Ward, Jianping Zhu.
The conference began on Sunday May 18 with the plenary talk given by
George Papanicolaou, Stanford University, USA (Problems in
scattering theory arising in the imaging of edges). The speaker
discussed the mathematics that arises in the imaging of edges, both
with full and partial aperture (array) data. In the second plenary
talk, Sijue Wu, University of Michigan, USA (Almost global
wellposedness of the 2-D full water wave equation) described her
proof of the existence of solutions for the infinite depth water wave
equations with small data for exponentially long time-scales. Hans
Weinberger, University of Minnesota, USA presented the third plenary
talk of the first session (Spreading speeds for a partially
cooperative two-species reaction-diffusion system), in which he
analyzed traveling wave behavior for a two-species system designed to
model the interaction of ungulates and grasslands.
After these plenary talks, the participants had a
chance to enjoy 19 early afternoon and 22 late afternoon parallel
sessions. The authors of this article organized and attended the
special session Dynamical systems and applications. This
session was designed so that some of the speakers were alloted two
consecutive 30-minute slots that kept the speaker's pace slow and the
audience's understanding high. This format seemed to be a great
success. The speakers for this session were W. Strauss, Z. Lin,
V. M. Hur, J. Bona, R. de la Llave, R. C. Calleja, P. Guidotti,
A. Scheel, and C. Zeng.
There were 22 morning parallel sessions on Monday May 19. One of
us attended the session on Nonautonomous
dynamical systems organized by R. Fabbri and C. Nunez, and enjoyed
the talks given by D. Damanik and D. Lenz on the subject lying at
the intersection of the spectral theory for Schrödinger operators
and spectral theory of dynamical systems. The other sampled
talks in several special sessions and listened to a very informative
talk on Evans's functions presented by Y. Latushkin in the session on
Nonautonomous dynamical systems.
In the first plenary talk on Monday (Heat equation and
Non-equilibrium (Classical) Statistical Mechanics), Carlangelo
Liverani (University of Rome ``Tor Vergata", Italy) illuminated a path
from the classical microscopic description of a macroscopic body to
the heat equation. The following speaker, Jean-Claude Saut
(Universit'e Paris-Sud, France) surveyed recent progress concerning
the existence and qualitative properties of traveling wave solutions
to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation posed on the whole space of two and
three dimensions in his talk (Traveling waves for the
Gross-Pitaevskii equation). After lunch, there were 23 early and 21
late afternoon sessions, including a continuation of the dynamical systems session.
Shouchaun Hu presents plaque to Jianping Zhu, the chair of the UT-Arlington Mathematics Department.
Over 300 conference participants enjoyed an excellent banquet on
Monday evening while being entertained by a first-rate mariachi
ensemble. Jerry Bona, the after dinner host, mentioned his impression
of the first AIMS conference in Springfield, Missouri: (we paraphrase)
"I thought it was well done, but not much would happen after that."
He then reviewed the amazing growth of the conferences in the series
and announced with pride that he had attended all of them. Jerry then
introduced Shouchuan Hu, the Director of AIMS, who presented a plaque
to the UT-Arlington Mathematics Department to commemorate their hard
work organizing the conference. The evening ended with John Graef's
recitations of some humorous mathematical anecdotes. A very good time
was had by all.
The morning of Tuesday May 20 started with 21 parallel sessions. The
authors attended the session on Long time behavior of Hamiltonian
and dissipative systems organized by A. Stefanov and M.
Stanislavova. The speakers gave an account of the most recent advances
in this area, concentrating on applications of harmonic analysis and
spectral theory. In two notable talks, H. Chen explained some recent
results on the existence and stability of traveling waves and C. Zeng
discussed spike solutions of a singular parabolic equation.
Carmen Chicone (middle) between sessions during the conference.
The plenary talk on Tuesday was given by Lassi Paivarinta, University
of Helsinki, Finland (Invisibility challenges inverse
problems). He discussed invisibility phenomena in the context of the
electrical impedance tomography problem (Calderon Problem). In the
afternoon there were 21 special sessions followed by a bus trip and
walking tour of the historic West End district of downtown Dallas. Carmen
was deeply moved by a reverent visit to Dealy
Plaza. One of his most important mathematical conversations
of the meeting took place later that day over dinner at an upscale Mexican restaurant,
where he had the pleasure to meet for the first time in person an
admired mathematical colleague, Hans-Otto Walther.
The morning of Wednesday May 21 started with 20 parallel sessions.
One of the authors of this report participated in the fourth session
on Qualitative behavior of solutions of evolutionary PDEs
organized by I. Lasiecka, G. Todorova, and M. Nakao. This session
gathered an array of experts working in both parabolic and hyperbolic
PDEs and their applications.
The first plenary talk on Wednesday was delivered by Lisa Fauci,
Tulane University, USA (Interaction of elastic biological
structures with complex fluids). Her energetic talk on the
biofluiddynamics of reproduction was complemented with excellent
graphics. The second plenary talk was given by Walter Strauss, Brown
University, USA (Steady Rotational Water Waves) on existence
proofs for waves with large amplitudes for arbitrary vorticity
functions. His talk was followed by 18 early and 9 late afternoon
parallel sessions. One of the authors of this report attended the
session Boundary value problems and control theory organized by
Hongqiu Chen, M. Colin and R. Fukuiumi, to listen to several
excellent talks on dispersive nonlinear equations.
This professionally organized high-level conference covered the full
range of research in dynamical systems: abstract mathematical
analysis, modeling, computation, and concrete applications in many
areas of science and technology including biomathematics, medicine,
fluid mechanics, celestial mechanics, astrophysics, engineering, and
economics. The impact of the AIMS conference series on our field is
hard to overestimate. We believe we speak for all participants in
saying that this conference was a first-rate mathematical experience.
The American Institute of Mathematical Sciences is an international
organization for the advancement and dissemination of mathematical
sciences well known for its great success in publishing a number of
excellent journals including Discrete and Continuous Dynamical
Systems (Series A and B), and many others impressive activities. See
http://aimsciences.org/index.html.
The 8th AIMS conference will take place at Dresden
University of Technology, Dresden, Germany during May 25-28, 2010 (for
more information contact Shouchuan Hu ([email protected]), Xin Lu
([email protected]), Stefan Siegmund ([email protected]), or
check the AIMS website http://aimsciences.org).