题 目： The dynamics of sand: compaction, surface roughening, jamming and heterogeneity

报告人：Professor Anita Mehta

         Theoretical Science Department, Satyendra Nath Bose National Centre,
         Block JD Sector 3, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700098, India

时 间：2012年9月4日(星期二)10:00

地 点：中心教学楼701

Abstract：
I will provide an overview of my work on the physics of granular media in this talk. My work started with the study of compaction on one hand, and the phenomenology of granular avalanches on the other. This was followed by the modelling of sandpile surfaces, and even later by the study of jamming. Most recently, I have worked on static and dynamic heterogeneities: I'll first discuss theoretical and simulation results on bridges (spatial heterogeneities) with some preliminary experimental results that match theoretical predictions. Dynamical and spatiotemporal heterogeneities will then be discussed in the neighbourhood of jamming, with special reference to theoretical results on a model of a constrained granular column.
Curriculum Vitae:
Anita Mehta (http://boson.bose.res.in/~anita/anita.html) is a theoretical physicist who specialises in the complex behaviour of natural and intelligent systems. Educated at Presidency College, Calcutta and Oxford University, she has done postdoctoral work at Cambridge, Birmingham, and IBM New York. She is currently a professor of physics in Calcutta, and has held visiting positions at Oxford, Harvard and Paris (to which she returns annually), among many others. She is seen to have pioneered the field of granular physics, where she has published extensively (many papers, two edited books and a monograph for Cambridge University Press). She is also working in the areas of cognitive science (perception of speech and music) and neuroscience (mechanisms of memory, theories of synaptic plasticity, the modelling of learning). She is currently collaborating with research groups in CEA Saclay (France), IFR Norwich (UK), the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (Germany), Queen Mary College London (UK) and Clarkson University (US) in addition to groups within India, where she is part of the multidisciplinary Cognitive Science Research Initiative of the Dept of Science and Technology. Selected by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum as its first Indian Science 'Ambassador' in the US, her other honours include a Fellowship of the American Physical Society, a Radcliffe Fellowship to Harvard in 2006-7 and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in 1978.

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