CDS/CIMMS Lunchtime Series: Frontiers of behavior: separatrices in biological problems

Dr. Shane Ross, Engineering Science and Mechanics, Virginia Tech

The identification of separatrices, the frontiers between qualitatively different kinds of behavior in a dynamical system, is important in many applications.  Increasingly, systems of interest are determined not by analytically defined model systems, but by data from experiments or large-scale simulations.  We discuss some recent work on separatrix identification when only experimentally derived time-series data are available, and how this provides a new tool for studying human motor control.  Applications to other areas, such as dispersal of airborne microbes across broad geographic regions, will also be discussed.