Symmetries in order and disorder

Speaker: Maia Angelova

Affiliation: Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Time: Monday 15/12/2014 from 15:00 to 16:00

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Parramatta (EB.1.32), accessible from Campbelltown (26.1.50) and Penrith (Y239).

Abstract:

The world around us offers a vast majority of objects and processes with a range of structures that go from total order to total disorder. Some objects, like the crystals have well expressed symmetry that determines their shape and various physical, chemical and mechanical properties. Others, like some processes in biology, have stochastic nature and are predominantly random and disordered. In principle, we have mathematical tools that are well developed to treat totally ordered or totally disordered worlds. In reality, however, the two are rarely separated and the mathematical methods and tools required to investigate the in-between states, are to a large extent in the process of development.

In this lecture, the static and dynamical symmetries of some objects and processes in physics, biology and physiology will be discussed and their effect on macroscopic and microscopic properties as well as on the
mathematical methods used to describe them will be considered. A number of mathematical methods and tools, developed to treat systems with different state of ordering, will be demonstrated. This will include examples of molecules, crystals and alloys, such as fullerene molecules, nanotubes, magnetically ordered crystals and amorphous alloys. The symmetries of some viruses will be discussed and an illustration of how their structure and properties are studied by Raman spectroscopy and how models of interaction between the proteins facilitate these studies will be given. The bioinformatics research of bacterial organisms will be discussed. Data analysis, performed on a large amount of gene expression data of Escherichia coli and other bacteria, obtained by microarray technology, will be presented. New classification method, developed in the group, the targeted projection pursuit, will be demonstrated for the classification of leukemic cancers in children. The patterns identified in the data suggest similarities in the gene behaviour. The mathematical and computing methods used to analyse these data are appropriate for disordered systems characterised by noisy and imperfect data.

A set of models, developed in our group, based on delayed differential equations, and dynamical systems approach to time series of physiological data, to study regulation and control mechanisms in humans to investigate the change of physiological and cognitive function in ageing process will be demonstrated. This will be illustrated with case studies of glucose- insulin regulation, sleep disorders, and Iron Man competition.

It is an interesting task, however, to search for some symmetries, that, if established, might speed up the process of clustering, solutions of differential equations and establish classification rules for dynamical metrics, and , in general, contribute to a more in depth knowledge and unambiguous conclusions about physiological and cognitive functions, gene functions, and functionalities, as well as increasing the predictive power of the tools under development. Further to these themes a question is posed: how does the symmetry facilitate the investigation of the systems, and how can the mathematics of the future models incorporate the in-between states of ordering.

Biography:

Professor Angelova joined Northumbria University in 1997 as a Senior Lecturer, being promoted in 2002 to Reader and in 2004 to become Professor of Mathematical Physics and Head of Mathematical Modelling Lab research group.

Maia had worked previously at Oxford University for 7 years as a College Lecturer in Physics at Somerville and Worcester Colleges; Assistant Professor at Sofia University for 2 years; and Research Fellow at the University of Kent for 2 years. She gained a first class degree BSc Physics, followed by MSc in Solid State Physics, and a PhD in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics from Sofia University. Maia had a sabbatical in 2012 at the University of Montreal, University of Yale and the National University of Mexico.

Maia is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Member of the London Mathematical Society and IEEE. She chaired the Organising Committees of the XXVIII International Colloquium on Group-Theoretical Methods in Physics in 2010 (GROUP28) and Mathematics of Human Biology - LMS regional meeting and workshop in 2012.

Maia was the Vice Chair of the Northern Branch of the Institute of Physics from 2003 to 2010. She is a member of the Programme Committees of IEEE Intelligent Systems 2012, Systems Biology and Bioengineering (WCE) and a member of the Editorial Board of Bioinformatics and Biology Insights. Maia is a registered expert and reviewer for the Marie Curie Programmes European Frameworks 5, 6 and 7.