Claude Le Bris: Modern materials science: modeling, mathematical theory and computational approaches

The talk, intended for a general audience, will survey some challenging problems, in terms of modeling, theory or computation, in contemporary materials science. A selection of such problems will be presented, each one being both timely and, in a sense, prototypical. Questions such as the coupling of a different descriptions of matter at the atomistic and at the continuum scales, the passage from the microscale to the macroscale, the insertion of uncertainties and heterogeneities in the models, etc, will be examined. We will discuss the interesting issues raised for mathematical analysis (theory of partial differential equations, stochastic processes, homogenization theory) and for numerical analysis (finite element methods, discrete to continuum, Monte Carlo methods, etc).

Coffee is served between 12.45 and 1.15 outside the lecture hall.