Mathematical Modeling Seminar Series
The Mathematical Modeling Seminar Series showcases speakers developing mathematical models and advancing mathematical approaches to study complex systems.
Join us for our upcoming seminar!
Atmospheric Transfer of Kinetic Energy across Planetary-scale Circulation and Weather
Tuesday, September 15
2:00 - 3:00 PM
Wallace Library (WAL)-4600 or Zoom
Dr. Pejman Hadi Sichani
Postdoctoral Associate
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Rochester
Abstract: Earth's atmosphere is a complex, multi-scale dynamical system that continuously exchanges energy across a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. Analyzing the nonlinear transfer of Kinetic Energy (KE) across scales is central to understanding and predicting atmospheric evolution. This nonlinear coupling is a primary factor limiting weather forecasts over long timescales. Traditionally, such analysis relied on spherical harmonics, which are inherently global and cannot provide local information connecting scales with circulation patterns geographically. To address this, we apply a coarse-graining scale-analysis framework, which enables us to create global geographic maps of the KE cascade at any scale for the first time. This is made possible by generalizing the definition of convolution to ensure that the filtering operator and spatial derivatives on the sphere commute. In addition to an upscale cascade, we find a significant downscale KE cascade at scales smaller than synoptic scales. In the troposphere, we find direct KE exchanges between the planetary-scale circulation and smaller scales, including mesoscale motions. The exchanges occur in latitudinal bands of alternating upscale and downscale KE transfer driven by the Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells. The physics behind such transfer is not due to a classical turbulence cascade, but is due to the action of planetary-scale strain against anisotropic effective pressure arising from sub-planetary-scale motions. These findings offer a novel perspective for exploring the interplay between weather and climate.
Bio: Pejman Hadi Sichani earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. His doctoral research used Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) to study the interaction of thermal and solutal stratification with wall-bounded turbulence, exploring internal gravity waves, energetics, and irreversible mixing in stably stratified flows. In 2022, he joined the University of Rochester, NY, as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he investigates atmospheric flow dynamics using scale-by-scale analysis, with a focus on kinetic energy transfer across scales in the troposphere and stratosphere. His research interests include computational fluid dynamics, turbulence theory, environmental and geophysical fluid dynamics, and high-performance computing.
Interpreting services are provided.
Fall Seminar Schedule
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Full-Waveform Inversion for Medical Ultrasound Imaging
Tuesday, October 20
2:00 - 3:00 PM
Wallace Library (WAL)-4600 or Zoom
Dr. Rehman Ali
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Imaging Sciences
University of Rochester
Abstract: Ultrasound imaging is widely used in clinical practice due to its safety, accessibility, and low cost, yet it remains largely qualitative, relying on images of backscattered echoes rather than quantitative estimates of tissue properties. In this talk, I present a framework for quantitative ultrasound imaging that inverts the physics of wave propagation to reconstruct spatial maps of tissue mechanical properties from measured waveforms. I discuss how this perspective naturally leads to full-waveform inversion as a PDE-constrained optimization problem. I also present experimental results in transmission ultrasound that demonstrate MRI-like image quality in breast imaging, highlighting the potential for quantitative ultrasound to complement or reduce reliance on more expensive imaging modalities. Finally, I outline the extension of this framework to pulse-echo ultrasound, where limited-view and highly ill-posed imaging conditions motivate related wave-based inverse methods. I conclude by discussing emerging directions in physics-based modeling and inversion strategies for improving robustness and clinical applicability.
Bio: Rehman Ali received the B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering (2016) from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA, USA) in 2016, M.S. in Computational & Mathematical Engineering (2020) and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (2022) at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA, USA). His research interests include signal processing, inverse problems, and computational imaging techniques applied to medical ultrasound. He is currently an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence awardee at the University of Rochester in the laboratory of Dr. Nebojsa Duric to develop waveform inversion reconstruction techniques for imaging acoustic tissue properties using ultrasound computed tomography.
Interpreting services are provided.
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Past Seminar Speakers
A QSP PDE Model of ADC Transport and Kinetics in a Growing or Shrinking Tumor
David Ross, Ph.D.
Director of QSP
GSK
Quantitative Systems Pharmacology: Mechanistic Models for Drug Development Decisions Under Uncertainty
Timothy Knab, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist
Metrum Research Group
Exploring the Surface Dynamics of Bimetallic Nanomaterials: From Overlayers to Nanoparticles
Dr. Obioma Uche
Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering
RIT
Development of a rubella immunity profile to assess the risk of rubella outbreaks
Dr. Kimberly Dautel
Prevention Effectiveness Fellow
Global Immunization Division in the Global Health Center
CDC
Learning and Uncertainty in Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Risk
Dr. Tony Wong
Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics
RIT
Towards Optimization of Monoclonal Antibody Therapeutics Using a 3D Model of Cancer-Immune Interaction
Dr. Jordana O'Brien
Postdoctoral Researcher
University at Buffalo
Computational Framework for the Elastography Inverse Problem
Basca Jadamba
Professor
RIT School of Mathematics and Statistics
Materials by Design
Pratik Dholabhai
Associate Professor
RIT School of Physics and Astronomy
Modeling treatment of osteoarthritis with standard therapy and senolytic drugs
Nourridine Siewe
Assistant Professor
RIT School of Mathematics and Statistics
Minimum spectral radius in a given class of graphs
Dr. Vishal Gupta, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
University of Rochester
Microbial Coatings and Predictive Modeling: A Systems Approach to Corrosion Inhibition
Dr. Blessing Emerenini, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics
Rochester Institute of Technology
An ancient evolutionary calculus for attention signaling retained in modern music
Dr. Gregory Babbitt, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, T.H. Gosnell School of Life Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
Blood Digital Twins Developed Using Dynamic State Modeling of Single-Cell RNA-seq Data
Dr. Pancy Thein Lwin, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Rochester Medical Center
Quantifying immune activity and optimal perturbations in the solid tumor microenvironment
Dr. Anne Talkington, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University at Buffalo
Learning Beyond the Training Distribution: Toward Adaptive and Open-World Learning Systems
Dr. Tyler Hayes, Ph.D.
Research Faculty & Research Scientist
Georgia Institute of Technology
A causal cross-frequency coupling framework for quantifying brain dynamic changes in dementia
Dr. Marco Pinto-Orellana, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Rochester Institute of Technology
Fraud Detection for Random Walks
Dr. Varsha Dani
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
A Systematic Formulation Tightening Approach for Mixed-Binary Linear Programming (MBLP) Problems
Dr. Bing Yan
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering
Rochester Institute of Technology
Bayesian Modeling and Statistical Inference in Machine Learning for Imaging Applications
Dr. Dimah Dera
Endowed Assistant Professor, Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
Systems Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics: Multiscale Modeling of Tissue Remodeling and Damage
Dr. Ashlee N. Ford Versypt
Associate Professor
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
University at Buffalo
Mathematical Models of Obesity-Induced Diabetes and Senescence-Induced Osteoporosis
Dr. Nourridine Siewe
Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics
Rochester Institute of Technology
Large-Scale Climate Dynamics Through the Lens of Network Analysis
Dr. Nishant Malik
Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics
Rochester Institute of Technology
Accelerating Eigensolvers with Momentum
Dr. Sara Pollock
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics
University of Florida
Quantum Computing: What Could It Do And How Do We Prepare?
Keegan Kresge
Math Development Program
National Security Agency
Modeling and Parameterization of Respiratory Dynamics in the Preterm Infant
Dr. Laura Ellwein Fix
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
Virginia Commonwealth University
Mathematical Modeling of Earth Surface Processes
Dr. Rachel Glade
Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Who is the GOAT? Sports Rankings and Random Walks on the Symmetric Group
Dr. Juan Carlos Martínez Mori
Schmidt Science Fellow and a President's Postdoctoral Fellow
H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
A Spatially Explicit Model of Inverse Colony Formation of Cellulolytic Biofilms
Dr. Hermann Eberl
Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Guelph
Brain-Inspired Computing: Beyond Backpropagation of Errors
Dr. Alexander Ororbia
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
A New Class of Odd Lindley Type Distributions and Its Applications
Dr. Nonhle Channon Mdziniso
Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics
RIT
Software for Compositional Modeling
Dr. John C. Baez
Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus & F. Burton Jones Chair
Mathematics Department
University of California, Riverside
Modeling the Effects of Temperature on Sleep Patterns
Dr. Alicia Prieto Langarica
Distinguished Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Youngstown State University
Fixed Point Method for Solving Bilevel Variational Inequalities with Applications
Dr. Oluwatosin Temitope Mewomo
Professor, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Durban, South Africa
Mathematical Modeling of Methane Gas Extraction from Lake Kivu
Dr. Denis Ndanguza
Dean, School of Science
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics
University of Rwanda
Patterns of Symmetric Orthogonal Matrices
Dr. Shahla Nasserasr
Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics
RIT
An Eye-Opening View of Computational Optimal Transport: OT in Molecular Vision Studies
Dr. Miranda Lynch
Staff Scientist, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
Buffalo, NY
A Whirlwind Tour of Data Assimilation from a Machine Learning Perspective with Applications to Sea Surface Height Interpolation
Dr. Juan Emmanuel Johnson
Postdoctoral Researcher
CSIC (Spanish National Research Council)
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Statistically Augmented Finite Element Models to Study Knee Biomechanics
Dr. Amy Lerner
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
Academic Director, Center for Medical Technology & Innovation
University of Rochester
Dr. Erin Leatherman
Associate Professor of Statistics
Kenyon College
ATOMDANCE: Machine Learning Denoising and Resonance Analysis for Functional and Evolutionary Comparisons of Protein Dynamics
Dr. Gregory Babbitt
Associate Professor, Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences
Navigating Uncertainty in Mathematical Models of Climate Impacts
Dr. Vivek Srikrishnan
Assistant Professor, Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering
Cornell University
Qualitative Methods for Small Volume, Inverse Shape Problems
Mr. Govanni Granados
PhD Candidate, Department of Mathematics
Purdue University
Modeling the Dynamics of Centrosome Movement
Dr. Sarah D. Olson
William Steur Professor & Department Head, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Mathematical Modeling in Supply Chain Management
Dr. Kristina Šorić
Professor, Department of Mathematics
RIT Croatia
Contact Lens and Tear Film Dynamics With Applications Towards Drug Delivery
Dr. Daniel Anderson
Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences
George Mason University
Rowing, Waving, and Worms: Exploring Tomopteris Swimming Performance
Dr. Nicholas Battista
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
The College of New Jersey
Voronoi Tessellations: From Optimal Quantization to Modelling Collective Behaviour
&
Dr. Rustum Choksi
Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
McGill University
Mathematical modeling of myosin dynamics in the cell cortex during confined bleb-based migration
Dr. Emmanuel Asante-Asamani
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Clarkson University
Efficient and Explainable Data Fusion for Misinformation Detection During High Impact Events
Dr. Zois Boukouvalas
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
American University
Extracting Autism's Biomarkers in Placenta Using Multiscale Methods
Dr. Karamatou Yacoubou Djima
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Wellesley College
Between Yes and No: Making Decisions Under Uncertainty
Dr. Ami Radunskaya
Lingurn H. Burkhead Professor of Mathematics
Pomona College
Variational Formulations for Direct Inversion from Full-Field Wave Data
Dr. Olalekan Babaniyi
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Rochester Institute of Technology
Bounded-Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics on Networks
Mason Porter
Professor, Department of Mathematics
University of California, Los Angeles
Towards a Non-Invasive, Functional Metric of Flexor Tendon Healing Using Ultrasound Elasticity Imaging
Dr. Michael Richards
Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Rochester Institute of Technology
Discrete-Time Models and a SARS CoV-2 Mystery: Sub-Saharan Africa’s Low SARS CoV-2 Disease Burden
Dr. Nourridine Siewe
Assistant Professor
School of Mathematical Sciences
Rochester Institute of Technology
Humans Make Things Messy
Dr. Shelby M. Scott
Senior Consultant and Health Data Scientist
Guidehouse
Improving SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing accuracy using higher dimensional probability models
Dr. Rayanne Luke
Assistant Professor
Postdoctoral Scholar
Johns Hopkins University / NIST
Stochastic and spatial modelling of reaction network systems
Dr. Lea Popovic
Assistant Professor
Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Concordia University, Montreal
Regularization of the Factorization Method with Applications
Dr. Isaac Harris
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
Purdue University
Variable Projection Methods for Separable Nonlinear Inverse Problems
Dr. Malena Español
Assistant Professor
School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
Arizona State University
