Professor Raymond Goldstein addresses a packed NCSA auditorium.Professor Raymond Goldstein from the University of Cambridge visited the University of Illinois campus in early November for the first installment of the Disquisitiones Mechanicae lecture series. Goldstein leads a research group that focuses on understanding nonequilibrium phenomena in the natural world, with particular emphasis on biological physics.
Written by By William Bowman
Professor Raymond Goldstein addresses a packed NCSA auditorium.
Professor Raymond Goldstein from the University of Cambridge visited the University of Illinois campus in early November for the first installment of the Disquisitiones Mechanicae lecture series. Goldstein leads a research group that focuses on understanding nonequilibrium phenomena in the natural world, with particular emphasis on biological physics.
Goldstein presented a perspective lecture, “Evolution of Biological Complexity” on November 3, which drew more than 250 attendees to the NCSA auditorium. He followed up with a fluid mechanics seminar titled “Microfluidics of Cytoplasmic Streaming,” held in the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory’s Deere Pavilion on November 4.
“The Thursday lecture was attended by an extremely diverse crowd from across campus, including not just engineering faculty and students but students from biology, chemical sciences, agriculture, geology, and other areas. This highlights the broad impact that mechanics has in a very diverse set of scientific fields,” said Mechanical Science and Engineering associate professor Kenneth Christensen, who organized the lecture series along with MechSE professor Moshe Matalon.“Prof. Goldstein’s Friday seminar focused on his latest research on the microfluidics of cytoplasmic streaming and generated very animated discussion amongst faculty and students both during the talk as well as during the discussion section.”
In addition to the lectures Goldstein spent his two-day visit meeting with a diverse crowd of engineering faculty and learning about the broad range of mechanics research being conducted at Illinois.
Disquisitiones Mechanicae continues in December with guest speaker George (Bud) Homsy, a renowned professor from the University of British Columbia. His field of research is fluid mechanics and transport phenomena. On December 1, Homsy will present a perspective lecture, “Multimedia Fluid Mechanics: A Remarkable Confluence of Teaching and Research,” followed on December 2 with a fluid mechanics seminar titled “Interfacial Flows: New Twists on an Old Subject.”
Faculty and students from all areas of campus are invited to attend. For more details, please visit the Disquisitiones Mechanicae web page.