[cmath] CMS / AARMS Lecture: Mary Lou Zeeman

[Sarah Watson]

*CMS / AARMS Lecture: Mary Lou Zeeman*

Date:  September 27, 2013
Time: 7:00pm
Venue:  Potter Auditorium,
Rowe Building,
Dalhousie University
6100 University Avenue
Halifax, NS

*Title*

Harnessing Math to Understand Tipping Points

*Abstract*

The term "tipping point" describes the moment when a system suddenly
changes state, with no obvious trigger other than a slowly changing
environment. Tipping points are difficult to predict and difficult to
reverse. Examples range from capsizing boats to fishery collapse; they
include financial market crashes, the poverty trap, melting polar ice
caps, shifts in ecosystems, and mood changes. A mathematical framework
for understanding how tipping points can arise as bifurcations has long
been in place. Pressing sustainability questions are now placing the
study of tipping points in the context of policy decision support, and
driving efforts to explore the interaction between tipping and
stochasticity in noisy systems. Can we extract, from measurements,
indicators of resilience to tipping and early warning signals for
proximity to a tipping point? We will introduce the bifurcation
framework and discuss these questions in the context of applications to
climate and biology.

*Biography*

Mary Lou Zeeman is the Wells Johnson Professor of Mathematics at Bowdoin
College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California,
Berkeley under the supervision of Moe Hirsch; worked at the University
of Texas at San Antonio for 15 years; and has held visiting positions at
the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and Cornell. Her
research interests range from dynamical systems to population dynamics
and fisheries, neuroscience, endocrinology, and climate science.

Zeeman is also involved in several interdisciplinary initiatives focused
on the health of the planet. She co-directs the Mathematics and Climate
Research Network <http://www.mathclimate.org/> that links researchers
across the U.S. and beyond to develop the mathematics needed to better
understand the earth's climate (www.mathclimate.org). She helped found
the Institute for Computational Sustainability based at Cornell
University, and she is on the organizational team of the Mathematics of
Planet Earth 2013 <http://www.mpe2013.org/> initiative.

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