Mathematics of Planet Earth

Watch the video of Dr. Daubechies’ lecture (English)

Watch the video of Dr. Daubechies’ lecture (French)

Résumé

Qu’ont en commun l’analyse d’images, les tremblements de terre et les panaches volcaniques? Non, cette devinette  n’est pas une blague! C’est l’histoire d’une mathématicienne amenée à collaborer avec des géophysiciens à la suite de ses recherches ayant mené au standard de compression des images JPEG200. Ensemble, ils cherchèrent à faire parler les données sismiques des tremblements de terre des dernières décennies. Et la Terre parla!

Abstract

What do images, earthquakes and plumes have in common? No, this is not a stupid riddle … The talk will tell the story of how the speaker, best known for her work on the mathematics underlying the image compression scheme in the JPEG2000 standard, found herself working with geophysicists. Together, they seek to develop ways to extract details of the structure of the Earth, volcanic plumes and all, from seismic data registered worldwide, in the past few decades, after every major earthquake.

Biography

Ingrid Daubechies received her Ph.D. degree from the Free University in Brussels, Belgium in 1980. She held a research position there before moving to the United States in 1987.  In 2011, she joined the Mathematics Department at Duke University.  Her research interests focus on the mathematical aspets of time-frequency analysis, in particular wavelets, as well as applications and she received numerous awards for it, including a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994 and, the same year, the Leroy P. Steele prize for exposition for her book, Ten Lectures on Wavelets.  In 2012, King Albert II of Belgium granted her the title of Baroness.  She is now President of the International Mathematical Union.

The MPE2013 Simons Public Lecture Series is funded by