Physics & Astronomy Colloquium – Fall 2021 – Cruz-Uribe

Speaker: David Cruz-Uribe (OFS, Math Department chair, University of Alabama)

Title: Swipe Right for Mathematics:  an Overview of Research in the UA Math Department

Mathematicians and physicists have had a long and productive relationship, with real world problems being at the foundation of whole fields of mathematics, and with mathematicians providing the tools needed to understand and model physical phenomena.  The NSF and other funding agencies actively encourage large, interdisciplinary grants to include a mathematician.  On the other hand, mathematicians and physicists sometimes have a hard time talking to one another:  as one recent internet meme put it, mathematicians want to be fussy pedants, while physicists like to troll fussy pedants.

In this talk, I want to help making these conversations easier.  I will give an overview of the active research areas in the Math Departments, and in particular I will focus on the work of several applied mathematicians whose research might be of immediate interest to physicists.  My goal is to leave the audience with enough knowledge of my department that, when a mathematical problem in your work emerges, you will be able to look at the math department research page and “swipe right” on someone you might be able to have a meaningful conversation with.  The talk will be non-technical, except for the brief interlude where I talk about my own research in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations.

Homepage: https://math.ua.edu/people/david-cruz-uribe/