On April 30, 2009 Jian-Guo Liu will be leading a discussion on A Simple Model for Flocking Dynamics.

Location: 4219 French Family Science Center

Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Abstract: The emerging behaviors of a large number of autonomous interacting agents such as flocking of birds, schooling of fishes, swarming of insects, have attracted much of research attentions from biologists, computer scientists, sociologists, engineers and mathematicians. In this informal talk, I will use a (overly) simplified model by Cucker-Smale for flocking of birds to explain how flocking is formated and its relationship to the range of information exchanged. I will also discuss some connections of this (overly) simplified model to some kinetic formulations for sticky particles and granular flow.