Scientific

The COVID-19 pandemic has passed its initial peak in most countries in the world, making it ripe to assess whether the basic reproduction number (R0) is different across countries and what demographic, social, and environmental factors other than interventions characterize vulnerability to the virus. In this talk, I will show the association (linear and non-linear) between COVID-19 R0 across countries and 17 demographic, social and environmental variables obtained using a generalized additive model. Moreover, I will present a mathematical model of COVID-19 that we designed and used to explore the effects of adopting various vaccination and relaxation strategies on the COVID-19 epidemiological long-term projections in Ontario. Our findings are able to provide public health bodies with important insights on the effect of adopting various mitigation strategies, thereby guiding them in the decision-making process.

Extremal length is a conformal invariant that plays an important
role in Teichmueller theory. For each essential closed curve on a Riemann
surface, it furnishes a function on the Teichmueller space. The extremal
length systole of a Riemann surface is defined as the infimum of extremal
lengths of all essential closed curves. Its hyperbolic analogue is the
hyperbolic systole: the infimum of hyperbolic lengths of all essential
closed curves. While the latter has been studied profusely, the extremal
length systole remains widely unexplored. For example, it is known that in
genus 2, the hyperbolic systole has a unique global maximum: the Bolza
surface. In this talk we introduce the extremal length systole and show
that in genus two it attains a strict local maximum at the Bolza surface,
where it takes the value square root of 2. This is joint work with Maxime
Fortier Bourque and Franco Vargas Pallete.

We propose an extension of the well-known Klausmeier model of vegetation to two plant species that consume water at different rates. Rather than competing directly, the plants compete through their intake of water, which is a shared resource between them. In semi-arid regions, the Klausmeier model produces vegetation spot patterns. We are interested in how the competition for water affects co-existence and stability of patches of different plant species. We consider two plant types: a thirsty species and a frugal species, that only differ by the amount of water they consume, while being identical in all other aspects. We find that there is a finite range of precipitation rate for which two species can co-exist. Outside of that range, (when the rate is either sufficiently low or high), the frugal species outcompetes the thirsty species. As the precipitation rate is decreased, there is sequence of stability thresholds such that thirsty plant patches are the first to die off, while the frugal spots remain resilient for longer. The pattern consisting of only frugal spots is the most resilient. The next-most-resilient pattern consists of all-thirsty patches, with the mixed pattern being less resilient than either of the homogeneous patterns. We also examine numerically what happens for very large precipitation rate. We find that for sufficiently high rate, the frugal plant takes over the entire range, outcompeting the thirsty plant.

The stability and dynamic properties of spike-type solutions to the Gierer- Meinhart equations are well understood. We examine the effect of adding noise to the equations on the spike-dynamics. We derive a stochastic ordinary differential equation for the motion of a single spike as well as the distribution of spike location from the associated Fokker-Plank equation. With sufficiently large amplitude noise, it is possible for the spike to reach the boundary of the domain and become effectively trapped for some time. In this case, we calculate the expected time to capture.

The Phase-Field-Crystal (PFC) model is a simple yet surprisingly useful model for successfully capturing the phenomenology of grain growth in polycrystalline materials. PFC models are variational with a free energy functional which is very similar (in some cases, identical) to the well-known Swift-Hohenberg free energy. In this talk, we will discuss the simplest PFC functional and its gradient flow.

The first part of the talk will focus on large scales and address the model’s uncanny ability to o capture certain features of grain growth. We introduce a novel atom-based grain extraction and measurement method, and then use it to provide a comparison of multiple statistical grain metrics between (i) PFC simulations, (ii) experimental thin film data for aluminum, and (iii) simulations from the Mullins model.

In the second part of the talk, we investigate the PFC energy landscape at small scales (the local arrangement of atoms). We address patterns which are numerically observed as steady states via the framework of the modern theory of rigorous computations. In doing so, we make rigorous conclusions on the existence of similar states. In particular, we show that localized patterns and grain boundaries are critical and not simply metastable states. Finally, we present preliminary work on connections and parameter continuation in the PFC system. This talk consists of work from the PhD thesis of Gabriel Martine La Boissoniere at McGill. Parts of the talk also involve joint work with S. Esedoglu (Michigan), K. Barmak (Columbia) and J.-P. Lessard (McGill).