SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR

Friday, 18 March 2011 at 11:30am

Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.

Refreshments at 11:15

Speaker: Chun Liu
         Department of Mathematics, Pennsylvania State University

Title:   Energetic Variational Approaches in the Modeling of
         Ionic Solutions and Ion Channels


Abstract:

Ion channels are key components in a wide variety of biological processes.
The selectivity of ion channels is the key to many biological processes.
We try to study these selectivity mechanisms in ion channels by developing
reduced models, taking into consideration of dielectric coefficient and ion
particle sizes, as well as their very different, however primary, structures
and properties. These self-organized systems will be modeled and analyzed
with energetic variational approaches (EnVarA) that  were motivated by
classical works of Rayleigh and Onsager.

The resulting/derived multiphysics-multiscale systems automatically satisfy
the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the basic physics that are involved in
the system.  In this talk, I will discuss some of the related issues we had
encountered in these projects.