Conferences and Workshops

No.	Title	Dates
22	Introductory Workshop to Special Semester on Inverse Problems in Cambridge, United Kingdom	2011-07-25 - 2011-07-29
Introductory Workshop to the Special Semester on Inverse Problems Workshop Organizers: Matti Lassas (Helsinki University) Roland Potthast (University of Reading & German Meteorological Service) The introductory Workshop is held within the inspiring atmosphere of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. It will include five special courses on pure, applied and stochastic inverse problems plus six highlighted lectures given by leading experts in the field. Special Semester Organisers: Professor M Brown (Cardiff), Professor T Fokas (Cambridge), Professor S Kurylev (University College London), Professor WRB Lionheart (Manchester) and Professor WW Symes (Rice) Many important real world problems give rise to an Inverse problem (IP). These include medical imaging, non-destructive testing, oil and gas exploration, land-mine detection and process control. For example, in the exploration for oil and gas, one needs to assess the structure of the interior of the earth from observations made at the surface. Typically, an explosion is created and the resulting shockwaves together with their reflections are used to build a model of the structure of the earth. In magnetoencephalography one needs to determine the electric current in the neurones from the measurement of the magnetic field outside the head. In the field of medical imaging IP forms an important tool in diagnostic investigations. For example, PET and SPECT are two modern imaging techniques whose success is dependent on solving IPs. At their simplest level IP are concerned with obtaining information about the interior of a body from data which is available at its surface. Mathematically, this is a parameter identification problem: given a set of data representing the behaviour of solutions, identify the unknown parameters of the model. The mathematical machinery needed for solving various IPs is mainly founded in mathematical analysis and uses tools from functional analysis, function theory, conformal maps, spectral theory, theory of PDEs, integral equations, and micro-local and global analysis. In recent years tools from differential geometry, stochastic analysis, etc., are becoming important. Moreover, in order to realise the solution to many applied problems in a useful way, the tools of numerical analysis and scientific computing are needed. We intend this programme to help cross-fertilise ideas between scientists by providing them with the opportunity to work on important problems with experts from other groups. We intend to focus on the following topics during the period of the programme: Inverse spectral problems, Analytic and geometric methods for IP, Stochastic methods, Numerical methods, and Application of IP to industry, medicine, finance, biology, and exploration seismology; and plan to organise several workshops which focus on these highlighted areas, as well as a tutorial meeting.