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• Oct

  23

  Appl Math: Meridith Joyce on "How to Find a Star by Accident, or How Not to Solve the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse"

  McCormick-Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (ESAM)

  11:15 AM M416, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  Title: How to Find a Star by Accident, or How Not to Solve the "Great Dimming" of Betelgeuse

  Speaker: Meridith Joyce, University of Wyoming

  Abstract: Alpha Orionis, popularly known as Betelgeuse, is a nearby red supergiant star visible to the naked eye. In light of the star's Great Dimming—a sudden, extreme drop in brightness that occurred in early 2020—a recent controversy surrounding Betelgeuse concerned whether it would explode as a supernova within the next few years, centuries, or millennia. Using a series of numerical techniques including one-dimensional stellar evolution models, hydrodynamic simulations, linear oscillation calculations, Fourier analysis, and the methods of a subfield of stellar astrophysics known as asteroseismology, my collaborators and I constrained the timeline for Betelgeuse's demise and revised many of the best estimates for its fundamental properties. In doing so, we discovered not only that Betelgeuse was not likely to undergo an imminent detonation, but that a pulsation signal unexplained by our models was, in fact, the signature of an as-yet-undiscovered binary companion. Its presence was confirmed earlier this year. What we never managed to do was explain the Great Dimming. In this talk, I will use the story of the discovery of Betelgeuse’s hidden, low-mass binary companion, Alpha Orionis B—affectionately nicknamed Betelbuddy—both to highlight the computational and numerical techniques employed in modern stellar astrophysics and to illustrate how the most meaningful discoveries often arise not from confirming what we set out to find, but from venturing down the rabbit holes of unexpected problems that emerge along the way.

  Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92966602010

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  TIME Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

  LOCATION M416, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Ted Shaeffer    ted.shaeffer@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick-Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (ESAM)

• Sep

  29

  ESAM: William Gilpin on "Fractal Basins in Reasoning Dynamics"

  McCormick-Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (ESAM)

  11:00 AM M416, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  Title: Fractal Basins in Reasoning Dynamics

  Speaker: William Gilpin, University of Texas Austin

  Abstract: Both biological and artificial intelligence perform reasoning, in which a system repeatedly revisits and revises its solution to a problem. We frame reasoning as a search process executed by high-dimensional dynamical systems. We use this framework to show that many leading artificial intelligence models produce transient chaos and fractal basins when they encounter hard algorithmic tasks like solving mazes, Sudoku, or mathematical puzzles. These phenomena emerge due to reasoning becoming trapped for extended durations near saddle points, which we show correspond to nearly-correct attempted solutions of the underlying problem. We thus find that transient chaos is a general consequence of problem hardness when modern artificial intelligence models represent tasks as dynamical systems. Our findings have broader implications for understanding biological networks and other analogue systems that perform computation.

  Bio: William Gilpin is an assistant professor of physics at UT Austin. His group studies computational nonlinear dynamics, with particular applications to systems biology and fluid dynamics. After completing his undergraduate degree in physics at Princeton, he received his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard’s quantitative biology initiative. His work is currently supported by an NSF CAREER award, a Cottrell Scholarship, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative.

  Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98191770704

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  TIME Tuesday, September 29, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  LOCATION M416, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Natalie Masini    natalie.masini@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick-Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (ESAM)

• Oct

  2

  National Manufacturing Day at Northwestern University

  Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation

  8:15 AM 2001 Sheridan Road

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  Manufacturing with Embodied AI

  Celebrating manufacturing-related R&D achievements and their business impacts on National Manufacturing Day!

  Leadership Remarks
  -Northwestern University President Mung Chiang
  -National Center for Manufacturing Sciences President and CEO Lisa Strama
  -Northwestern University Provost Erik Luijten

  Corporate Panel, Stan Rendon, 3M VP of R&D, Yu Cao, Applied Materials Chief AI Officer and Amey Deosthali, AMD Head of Robotics, Industrial & Healthcare (Physical AI)

  NU Faculty Panel, Prof. Jian Cao, Prof. Ed Colgate, Prof. Mark Hersam, Prof. John Rogers

  Founders/SME Panel, Jason Sebastian, Executive VP QuesTek Innovation, Demeng Che, co-Founder & CEO Converge Lab, Gino Domel, CEO HiDeNN-AI, Joe Mullenbach, co-founder Fluid Reality

  Ecosystems Panel, Tom Kurfess, CTO, NCMS & Executive Director of Mfg Institute at Georgia Tech, Berardino Baratta, CEO MxD, Allison Fisher, Chief of Staff mHUB

  Register Now

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  TIME Friday, October 2, 2026 at 8:15 AM - 5:00 PM

  LOCATION 2001 Sheridan Road    map it

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  CONTACT Maegen Gregory    maegen.gregory@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation