ABSTRACTS
Ed Braun,
Zoology
The early development of zoology as a science was been dominated by the examination of qualitative information from natural history. But the qualitative science of the 19th century developed into a highly quantitative field of inquery over the 20th century. The relationships among organisms, called their phylogeny, represents a logical organizing principle for biology. An example based upon the large-scale reconstruction of avian phylogeny is presented, showing that the available technology is sufficient to collect the data necessary to estimate the geneological relationships for ancient birds (and other groups of organisms). But there remain unsolved analytical challenges. Additional applications of mathematical methods in zoology will be discussed, to provide a flavor for the type and scale of problems being approached.
Erik Deumens,
Chemistry and Physics
When calculations in quantum field theory kept giving nonsensical answers, the idea of renormalization led to progress. There is a joke that we are educating specialists who have ever increasing knowledge about an ever decreasing subject. Many interdisciplinary efforts suffer from this effect. To counter it, a renormalization of the education level of senior and junior research personnel is needed and of the education process that produces new researchers. The history of science gives us examples of a successful tool to perform the renormalization.
Gar Hoflund,
Chemical Engineering
Studies in surface chemistry provide important opportunities for collaboration between experimentalists and theoreticians. This point is illustrated by several examples. (1) Many surfaces in technologically important application areas such as heterogeneous catalysis and semiconductors form layered structures in which the composition varies as a function of depth. By collecting appropriate data and formulating a mathematical model, it will be possible to predict the compositional depth profile. (2) Nanotechnology has become a highly visible research area. Research has shown that nanoparticles exhibit different catalytic properties than larger (poly) particles. Although the reason for this difference is not understood, a combined theoretical/experimental approach could resolve this important issue.
James Jones,
Agricultural & Biological Engineering
David Reitze,
Physics
Sergei Shabanov,
Mathematics
Sam Trickey,
QTP (Physics and Chemistry)
Since Summer 1996, I have been heavily involved with roughly a dozen large-scale, multidisciplinary proposals. For all but two, I was the primary writer for the proposal or preproposal. All were exclusively or heavily oriented to computational science, with some component of theory, modeling, and simulation of materials, my specialty. Four succeeded, including the two largest NSF Division of Materials Research Materials Theory grants ever to UF. The three IGERTs and three large Center proposals all failed. One cluster of internal preproposals was in an area that has attracted much funding nationally, but the pre-proposals all were rejected. This talk will summarize some lessons learnt from these experiences about our institutional strengths and weaknesses in competing for such funding. Issues include
Eduardo C. Vallejos,
Horticultural Sciences
Keith White,
Psychology
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Created
Monday, May 01, 2006.
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