Upcoming Meetings

Venue Date Speaker and Affiliation University of Stirling 16 May 2025 Miguel Pinar (University of Granada)

Prof Jon Chapman (University Oxford)

Exponential asymptotics and applied mathematics Divergent series are the invention of the devil, and it is shameful to base on themany demonstration whatsoever.” – N. H. Abel.The lecture will introduce the concept of an asymptotic series, showing how useful divergentseries can be, despite Abel’s reservations. We will then discuss Stokes’ phenomenon, wherebythe coefficients in the series appear to change discontinuously. […]

Prof Alain Goriely (University of Oxford)

Seeing is deceiving: The mathematics of visual illusions Illusions have been a constant source of amusement but they are also a unique gateway into understanding the way we perceive the world and how the brain processes information. The simplest visual illusions often involve a primary element—be it a line or a circle—that undergoes deformation or displacement due to the influence […]

Prof Anna-Karin Tornberg (KTH Stockholm)

Layer potentials – quadrature error estimates and approximation with error control When numerically solving PDEs reformulated as integral equations, so-called layer potentials must be evaluated. The quadrature error associated with a regular quadrature rule for evaluation of such integrals increases rapidly when the evaluation point approaches the surface and the integrand becomes sharply peaked. Error estimates are needed to determine […]

Prof. Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE (University of Cambridge)

Chance, luck, and ignorance; how to put our uncertainty into numbers We all have to live with uncertainty about what is going to happen, what has happened, and why things turned out how they did.  We attribute good and bad events as ‘due to chance’, label people as ‘lucky’, and (sometimes) admit our ignorance.  I will show how to use the […]

Prof. Benjamin Doyon (King’s College London)

The emergence of hydrodynamics in many-body systems One of the most important problems of modern science is that of emergence. How do laws of motion emerge at large scales of space and time, from much different laws at small scales? Hydrodynamics offers a basic but very relevant example. Molecules in air simply go along their journey following Newton’s equations. But […]

Prof. Rachel Norman FRSE (University of Stirling)

Deconstructing beta: Using mathematical models to understand disease transmission and control – (Stirling) In this talk we will look at mathematical models of infectious diseases and how we model disease transmission and hence understand disease control for a series of case studies. Starting with the simple models that you will be familiar with since covid and ending with an example […]