# Colloquia Patavina: Nuotatori imbattibili

ARGOMENTI: Seminari

Martedi' 13 Aprile 2010 alle ore 16:00 in aula 1A/150 della Torre Archimede il Prof. Antonio De Simone (SISSA) terra' una conferenza della serie Colloquia Patavina.

La Commissione Colloquia
M.A. Garuti, M. Pavon, M. Pitteri, F. Rossi

-Titolo
Nuotatori imbattibili

-Conferenziere
Antonio De Simone (SISSA)

-Abstract
Verranno discusse le strategie utilizzate dai micro-organismi per il nuoto, le lezioni che si possono trarre per il progetto di micro-nuotatori artificiali e alcune ricette per l'ottimizzazione della bracciata. Verranno descritti gli elementi fondamentali della fluido-dinamica biologica, la struttura geometrica che governa la matematica del nuoto a bassi numeri di Reynolds, l'interpretazione del nuoto alla luce della teoria geometrica del controllo e, infine, alcuni algoritmi numerici per il controllo ottimale.

-Breve cv
Full professor of Engineering Science since 20.12.2002, his research interests concern the mathematical modelling of condensed matter focusing, in particular, on mechanical properties of new materials and on pattern formation driven by rough energy landscapes.
He is author of more than 60 peer-reviewed papers on the mechanics of biological systems, soft and granular matter, wetting, nonlinear elasticity, plasticity and damage, electromagnetism and phase transformations. He has a broad international experience (research appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Minnesota, Universite' Paris XIII, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences-Leipzig, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications-Minneapolis), and has lectured in many leading universities in Italy, Europe (Cambridge, Oxford, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris 6, 11, and 13, Universities of Bonn, Hannover, Stuttgart, Technical Universities of Berlin, Munich, Vienna) and in the US (Caltech, MIT, Courant Institute at NYU, Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton).
He has been invited speaker at a few dozens of international conferences, and a plenary speaker at GAMM2004, Dresden, where he has lectured on multiscale modelling of material behavior. He will be plenary lecturer at the 7th Euromech Solid Mechanics Conference, Lisbon, in 2009.
He has been co-organizer of more than 10 international workshops and conferences, among which the SIAM Conference on Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science (Philadelphia, 2008).
In 2008 he has coordinated with L. Colombo the Advanced School on Brittle Fracture and Plastic Slip: from the Atomistic to the Engineering Scale? at CISM, Udine, where he has lectured in 2007 (Rank-one convexity, Quasiconvexity and Polyconvexity in Applied Mechanics?) and will lecture in 2009 (Mechanics and Electrodynamics of Magneto- and Electro-Elastic Materials?).
He has received the Keith Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007. He is member of the GAMM Technical Committee on Analysis of Microstructures, and editor of the following international journals: Applied Mathematics Research eXpress (since 2003), Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics (since 2005), Networks and Heterogeneous Media (since 2005), Communications in Mathematical Sciences (since 2007), SIAM Journal of Mathematical Analysis (since 2007).
His main experience as a research coordinator has been the leadership of the independent research group on Multiscale Phenomena in Materials' at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, from 1998 to 2003.
A signature of the activities of the group, which also characterizes the current research activities, has been the attempt to cover a broad spectrum of perspectives on each of the analyzed phenomena, through the development and analysis of mathematical models, their numerical simulation, and the comparison with experimental evidence (for details, see http://people.sissa.it/~desimone/).
He is SISSA Director's delegate for Technological Transfer since 2006.