New Inverse Problems Center To Hold Opening Conference April 5-7

Troy, N.Y. – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has established the Center for Inverse Problems where researchers from various disciplines will pool their talents in an innovative approach to find the answers to complex problems. The center is under the directorship of Joyce McLaughlin, the Ford Foundation Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Rensselaer.

"Inverse problems are those in which the outcome is known, but the precise factors leading to the outcome are not," said Joseph Flaherty, dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer. "Rensselaer has a talented group of individuals working in diverse areas where inverse problems arise, such as seismology and medical imaging. By uniting the individual talents in the Center for Inverse Problems, we hope to have a combined effect on the scientific community that's greater than the sum of its parts."

The center is bringing together researchers to create models, create new mathematics to analyze the models, develop algorithms, and use scientific computing to provide generic solutions that apply to a wide range of diverse and critical problems.

Since it is either impossible to directly observe objects that are the focus of inverse problems, or the methods to directly observe the objects are destructive or impractical, researchers use inverse theory to create an image of an object's interior from measurements taken at the surface, Steven Roecker, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer, said. Although the applications differ, the techniques used to create the image are often similar. For example, the methodology used to create images to study fault zones in the Earth's substructure is similar to that used to detect tumors in the human body. Scientists from both of these disciplines could perhaps further their research by pooling their talents and sharing their experiences in imaging technology and inverse problem solving.

Conference Details
Rensselaer will kick off the center's opening by hosting the Interdisciplinary Inverse Problems Conference on April 5-7, 2004, in the Low Center for Industrial Innovation with guest speakers from around the world. Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson will address the group at 8:40 a.m., April 6.

The conference agenda consists of plenary lectures in the morning and 30-minute symposiums in the afternoon. Topics for discussion will include geophysical imaging, biomedical imaging, radar imaging, time reversal, earthquake dynamics, ocean acoustics, and photonics.

In addition to Rensselaer faculty, a sampling of plenary speakers and panelists include:

Maarten DeHoop, Colorado School of Mines
Mathias Fink, ESPCI, Paris
Arthur Lerner-Lam, Columbia University
George Papanicolaou, Stanford University
William Rundell, National Science Foundation Division of Mathematical Sciences
Erkki Somersalo, Helsinki University of Technology
William Symes, Rice University
David Tuch, Massachusetts General Hospital
Gunther Uhlmann, University of Washington

Contact: Mary Cimo
Phone: (518) 687-7174
E-mail: cimom@rpi.edu