MATH+ is delighted to welcome Alex M. Blumenthal from the Georgia Institute of Technology, based in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), to join the MATH+ community as a MATH+ Visiting Scholar hosted by Maximilian Engel of Freie Universität Berlin. The MATH+ Visiting Scholarship Program aims to enhance the international profile of MATH+ by providing support for more extended visits by outstanding scientists and scholars from around the world.

Alex Blumenthal is currently an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech. After studying Applied Mathematics at Columbia University (B.S. summa cum laude in 2011), he received his PhD at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in 2016. He then moved to the University of Maryland as a postdoctoral researcher. Subsequently he became an assistant professor at Georgia Tech in 2020.

He is a world-leading expert on ergodic theory and random dynamical systems with outstanding contributions to these areas and their links with fluid dynamics, turbulence, and SPDEs. His research interests lie primarily in random dynamical systems focusing on chaotic behavior. His work has also intersected with fluid dynamics and the stretch-and-fold mechanism responsible for forming small scales in passive scalar advection, e.g., the fine-grain patterns formed by milk stirred into a cup of tea. Some of his joint work along these lines was profiled in the recent Quanta article “Mathematicians Prove Universal Law of Turbulence.”

When asked about his research stay in Berlin, Blumenthal said: „While in Berlin, I plan to continue my work and interact with the excellent group here, especially Maximilian’s, with whom I have several joint projects and shared interests, including (1) quantitative path-wise statistics of random dynamical systems and (2) stochastic bifurcations.“

Along with his research work, he will also be engaged in teaching, holding a course on applications of random dynamical systems and smooth ergodic theory to fluid mechanics models, offered at Freie Universität Berlin. This will build on recent work establishing sensitive dependence on initial conditions for both Lagrangian flows of passive tracers as well as for the Eulerian dynamics of the fluid itself. A special course on the connection of RDS/ergodic theory and fluid mechanics substantially contributes to the Berlin Mathematical School (BMS) teaching program. On 15 June, Blumenthal is giving a talk at the June colloquium of the DFG Collaborative Research Center CRC 1114: Scaling Cascades in Complex Systems.

Alex Blumenthal will stay in Berlin from 22 May to 15 July 2023, hosted by the research group of MATH+ Junior Research Group Leader Maximilian Engel at Freie Universität Berlin.

Welcome to Berlin and the MATH+ community!

LINKS

• Alex Blumenthal at Georgia Tech
• Quanta article about Alex Blumenthal’s current research project
• 15 June Colloquium: CRC 1114 Scaling Cascades in Complex Systems
• Research Group of Maximilian Engel at Freie Universität Berlin
• Personal homepage of Maximilian Engel