link

March 31, Wednesday
11:00 – 13:00

Fluid-Structure Interaction in Complex Biological Systems
Computer Science seminar
Lecturer : Dr. Ed Givelberg
Lecturer homepage : http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~givelber
Affiliation : Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley
Location : -101/58
Host : Dr. Eitan Bachmat
Complex biological systems containing tissue immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid are ubiquitous. Understanding the dynamics of such systems is crucial in a vast array of scientific and engineering problems, such as the function of the heart, the mechanism of hearing, the dynamics of biological membranes, cell morphology and insect flight, to name a few. In such systems the tissue may be elastic or active, and it may posess complicated internal structure. Its interaction with the fluid is often coupled with other physical processes, such as biochemical reactions, electrical currents and heat diffusion.

In this talk I will survey my work on large-scale computer modeling of such systems using the immersed boundary method. I will discuss the application of this work to modeling the fluid dynamics of the heart and (in more detail) the construction of a computational model of the cochlea (the inner ear).