New Applications of Geometry in Biology
Professor Joeal Hass
Department of Mathematics
University of California, Davis
ABSTRACT
Almost everything we encounter in our 3-dimensional
world is a surface - the outside of a solid object. Comparing the
shapes of surfaces is, not surprisingly, a fundamental problem
in both theoretical and applied mathematics. Deep mathematical
results are now being used to study objects such as bones,
brain cortices, proteins and biomolecules. This talk will discuss
recent joint work with Patrice Koehl that introduces a new metric
on the space of genus-zero surfaces and applies it in this context.
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