Chaos, Fractals, and $1 Extra: Mathematician Hong-Kun Zhang receives $400,001 NSF CAREER Award
Hong-Kun Zhang, assistant professor in the Mathematics and Statistics Department, has received a five-year $400,001 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Zhang's project will use mathematical tools to address applied problems in physics, chemical engineering, and other sciences, and will ultimately lead to new undergraduate and graduate courses, and to a high school lecture series related to chaos and fractal geometry.
The theory of hyperbolic systems has provided excellent models or paradigms for understanding chaos and diffusion processes in systems that are random or changing over time. The goal is to capture the major complexity of these systems, from integrability to chaotic behavior, without the difficulty of integrating the equations of motion.
Zhang's project will contribute to modern statistical physics and chemical engineering, as her study of physical invariant measures and their asymptotic statistical properties will provide new insight into the nature of steady states and transport phenomena.
Zhang will integrate her research into a new undergraduate course on topics related to chaos and fractals and a graduate-level courseon stochastic differential equations.
Zhang will also initiate a lecture series at the Amherst Regional High School on topics related to chaos and fractal geometry, in order to engage local high school students in this interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research. She will also organize annual workshops for high school girls that will include hands-on scientific activities and career discussions with individual pursuing careers in the mathematical sciences. One of Zhang's goals is to help high school girls visualize the beauty of mathematics.
February 22, 2012.
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