To maintain a productive research activity, I need to be regularly confronted with new ideas and new subjects. This is why time spent on sabbatical can be so important: as a friend of mine described it, quite appropriately, it is an "academic refreshment". In this respect, the mathematics department at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø College was a perfect place to spend some time away from teaching and administrative duties: it provided many opportunities to attend conferences and seminars, and whatever question I was thinking about, more often than not there was an expert in the building to share ideas with.
Beyond this mathematical refreshment, my stay at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø College resulted in several collaborations that I hope will be long-lasting.
I am currently working with physicists in Nice and Singapore, doing experiments on atomic clouds cooled and trapped with lasers; one of my goal was to provide some theoretical foundations to their ongoing experimental and numerical work: this led to a work combining the expertise of Dan Crisan from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø College and Thierry Goudon from Nice. In a separate collaboration initiated by Pierre Degond and involving also Ewelina Zatorska (now at University College London) and Jose Antonio Carrillo, we investigated how to describe at a macroscopic scale (usually the one we are most interested in, and certainly the one which allows for easier numerical simulations) the complex interactions between particles forming a dynamical network, continuously linking with their neighbors and breaking these links: this is an important building block to understand a wide variety of biological systems.
My stay at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø College was too short, but will probably feed my research for several years. And beyond the wonderful science, living for a few months in central London was also an unforgettable experience!
Host: Professor Dan Crisan
