News & Events
Edward L. Reiss Memorial Lectures

Edward ReissEdward L. Reiss was a distinguished applied mathematician at Northwestern who passed away in 2000. To honor his memory, the Edward L. Reiss Memorial Fund was established to support the Edward L. Reiss Memorial Lectures in Applied Mathematics as an annual event.

Reiss Lecturers give two seminars, usually on consecutive days:

  • One lecture is a general talk, open to the public and accessible to the wider scientific community, covering broad topics in applied mathematics. 
  • One lecture is a more technical lecture discussing recent research results.

REGISTER HEREfor the general audience lecture on 03/27 at 4pm.

2024 Reiss Lecture

As a part of the Reiss lecture series, Professor Anette Hosoi will deliver lectures on Filtration and Fluid Mechanics Inspired by the Manta Ray and A Few Short Stories about Probability and Sports on March 26th and 27th respectively. The lectures will be broadcast virtually via Zoom.

Anette Hosoi                                                    

Anette (Peko) Hosoi, Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Filtration and Fluid Mechanics Inspired by the Manta Ray
March 26, 11:15 am Central Time, Tech M416: 
https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/94670869656
SHVAC systems account for about 20% of U.S. energy consumption of which at least 7% is consumed by fans. Their energy efficiency strongly depends on their filters: reducing resistance can result in significant energy savings. We explore novel strategies for filtration inspired by the manta ray, which has evolved a system for filtering zooplankton that appears to be unlike any industrial filtration mechanism. Instead of a sieve strategy, the manta deploys microstructures, which are hypothesized to instigate eddies that push particles away from the filtration pores, resisting clogging, and enabling the filtration of particles much smaller than the pore size. Using perturbation theory and asymptotics we examine two toy problems that mimic various features of the filtration strategies employed by manta rays and find that experimental data from wavy channels are consistent with our asymptotic predictions.

A few short stories about probability and sports 
March 27, 4:00pm Central Time, Ford Hive Rm 2350:
https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95662167446
In most professional sports, every physical attribute of an athlete that can be measured is tracked and recorded. There exists an abundance of (relatively) high quality data — in football, basketball, baseball, cricket, etc. — which makes sports an ideal testing ground for new analyses and algorithms. In this talk I will describe a few studies that lie at the intersection of sports and data. Topics may include: the origin of the increase in home runs in Major League Baseball; the public health impact of allowing fans in American football stadiums during the pandemic; the role of skill and chance in sports and other activities; measuring “court sense” i.e. an athlete’s decision-making ability in basketball; and the design of optimal running shoes.

Previous Speakers

May 22-23, 2023
The Roles and Consequences of Randomness in Biological Systems
Interpretable Polynomial Neural ODEs
Professor Linda Petzold, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara

May 2-3, 2023
Writing About Math for the New York Times
Networks of Oscillators That Synchronize Themselves
Professor Steve Strogatz, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics, Cornell University

April 19-20, 2021
Quantifying Patterns in Biological Systems
Localized Pattern Formation
Professor Björn Sandstede, Department Chair, Division of Applied Mathematics, and Professor of Applied Mathematics, Brown University

May 6-7, 2019
From Differential Equations to Data Science and Back
Accelerated Simulation for Plasma Kinetics
Professor Russel Caflisch
, Director, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University

April 9-10, 2018
Fluid Mechanics at the Scale of the Cell
Upside-Down and Inside-Out: The Biomechanics of Cell Sheet Folding
Professor Raymond E. Goldstein, Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems, Department of Applied Math & Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge

May 15-16, 2017
The Swim Pressure of Active Matter
The "Super-Fluid" Like Behavior of Active Matter
Prof. John F. Brady, California Institute of Technology

May 9-10, 2016
Predicting Shape: Geometry, Physics and Biology
Programming Shape: Geometry, Physics and Engineering
Prof. L. Mahadevan, Harvard University

May 11-12, 2015
Surface Nanobubbles and Nanodroplets: The Big Picture
The Phase Space of Turbulent Taylor-Couette Flow
Prof. Detlef Lohse, University of Twente, Netherlands

May 19-20, 2014
Spatially Localized Structures: Basic Theory
The Phase Space of Turbulent Taylor-Couette Flow
Prof. Edgar Knobloch, University of California, Berkeley

April 29-30, 2013
Beyond All Orders: The Future of Asymptotics?
Localised Pattern Formation and Snaking Bifurcation Diagrams
Prof. S. Jon Chapman, University of Oxford

April 30, 2012 & May 1, 2012
Confined Colloid Suspensions: Some Equilibrium Properties
Confined Colloid Suspensions: Some Out-of-Equilibrium Properties
Prof. Stuart Rice, University of Chicago

April 11-12, 2011
How The Leopard Got Its Spots
Mathematical Modeling of Tumor Dynamics
Prof. Philip Maini, University of Oxford

April 15-16, 2010
The Challenges of Sustainability
Collective Motion in Animal Populations
Prof. S. Levin, Princeton University

April 6-7, 2009
Frontiers in Complex Systems Research
Kinetics of Transitions Across a Barrier in the Presence of Time Dependent Forcing
Prof. G. Nicolis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles

May 5-6, 2008
Emergence of Spatial Patterns in Physical, Chemical and Biological Systems
Dymical Systems Invariant Curves as Barriers to Transport in Oceanic Flows
Prof. Harry Swinney, University of Texas

June 7-8, 2007
Polarization fingerprints in the clear blue sky
Physics of non-Hermitian degeneracies
Prof. Sir Michael Berry, University of Bristol

May 22-23, 2006
Flapping Flight as a Bifurcation in Reynolds Number
Paired Vortices, Vorticity Growth, and Hovering Flight
Prof. Stephen Childress, Courant Institute, NYU
This lecture was co-sponsored by the IGERT program.

May 23-24, 2005
Bifurcations and Geometry
Continuum Equations for Rarefied Gases
Prof. Edward A. Spiegel, Columbia University

May 17-18, 2004
Passive and Active Array Imaging in Clutter
High Capacity Communication Systems in Complex Environments
Prof. George C. PapanicolaouStanford University

May 12-13, 2003
Adaptive and Parallel Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Conservation Laws:
Fundamental Computational and Theoretical Properties
A-Posteriori Error Estimation and Superconvergence
Prof. Joseph E. Flaherty, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

May 13-14, 2002
The Mathematics of Visual Perception:
Binocular Vision
Color Vision
Prof. Joseph B. Keller, Stanford University

May 14-15, 2001
Continuation, Bifurcation and Homotopy in Scientific Computation
The Recursive Projection Method: Stabilization and Acceleration of Iterative Processes
Prof. Herbert B. Keller, California Institute of Technology & University of California, San Diego