Presenter
Abstract
Most biological activities involve transport and distribution of ions and charged particles in complicated biological environments. The coupling and competition between different ionic solutions in various biological environments provide the mechanism of the relevant specificities and selectivities in these systems. These systems are often associated with special biological and chemical conditions, such as the high concentration of specific species in solutions, which make most of the “ideal” assumptions in classical and conventional approaches irrelevant or unsuitable in the studies of biological problems.
The speaker will explore the underlying mechanism governing various diffusion processes. He will employ a general framework of energetic variational approaches, consisting of in particular, Onsager’s Maximum Dissipation Principles, and their specific applications in biology and physiology. The speaker will also discuss several extended general diffusion systems motivated by the study of ion channels and ionic solutions in biological cells. In particular, he will focus on our recent results in studying the interactions between different species, the boundary effects, and in some cases, the thermal effects.
About the Speaker:
Chun Liu is the Chair and Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics in Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Liu’s research is in nonlinear partial differential equations and applications in complex fluids, such as liquid crystal growth, polymers, and ion channels in cell membranes. He developed a general framework of energetic variational approaches (EnVarA) to study various problems arising from physical and biological applications. Liu’s research has been supported by various federal and international funding agencies.
About the Lecture Series:
The Householder Lecture Series honors Dr. Alton S. Householder, who spent most of his career in the Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (now the Computational Science and Mathematics Division), serving as the director for much of that time, before joining the Department of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee. The series is sponsored jointly by the Computational and Applied Mathematics Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Department of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The purpose of the lecture is to have distinguished mathematicians present research on various topics in computational and applied mathematics. The series began in 2014 and is held twice per year, alternating each time between the two institutions.