Brock A. Mosovsky

Welcome

I am currently performing research with Michel Speetjens at the Eindhoven University of Technology under the aegis of a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Fellowship. This Fulbright project aims to improve the energy efficiency of industrial mixing devices--most notably, the rotated-arc mixer (RAM)--via computational modeling and simulation within the framework of transitory dynamical systems (click HERE for a movie showing how fluid is mixed in a periodic version of the RAM flow). This project will serve as a capstone to my Ph.D. in Applied Math at the University of Colorado at Boulder which is advised by Dr. James D. Meiss and focuses on the quantification of transport and mixing in transitory dynamical systems. I plan to graduate with my doctoral degree in May of 2013.

Apart from transitory systems, I am also interested in coherent structures, transport, and mixing in more general time-dependent systems. The banner image above is taken from my work on the efficient numerical extraction of the boundaries of so-called Lagrangian coherent structures in a simple time-dependent model of a paired vortex flow. I find it fascinating that such intricate (and beautiful) structures can arise out of the "chaos" resulting from exceedingly simple flows, and a main goal of my research to date has been to better understand how these structures interact and how this interaction influences the global properties of the flow. Ultimately, the goal is to use this mathematical understanding for practical purposes such as the design of more energy-efficient industrial mixers, the improved tracking of pollutants in the ocean and atmosphere, and even increased diagnostic ability in biomedical applications.

Living in Boulder for the last five years, I have nurtured a passion for rock climbing in my free time. Part of my love for the sport stems from the mathematical nature of working out the right sequence of moves to get to the top of a rock climb, and part of it comes from just being outside in nature and enjoying the company and comraderie of climbing with a great group of friends. Despite the lack of real rocks in The Netherlands, the climbing culture is still quite strong, with many climbing gyms spread throughout the country. One of the best is just a 10 minute bike ride (the Dutch bike everywhere!) away from my current residence. I plan to make use of this wonderful gym both to train and to meet new friendly climbers during the course of my stay in the Netherlands.

As a last note of interest, I have been volunteering as a "cultural ambassador" of sorts, visiting several highschools (note: website available in Dutch only) throughout the Netherlands. The purpose of these visits is to talk with students and exchange ideas on current events in a personal manner that is, perhaps, less biased than obtaining information from mass media outlets. This will, ideally, foster an appreciation for the similarities and differences between the U.S. and The Netherlands, and promote tolerance and understanding between the two cultures. This has already been an extremely interesting and rewarding experience, and has helped me to understand how the U.S. and its policies and citizens are perceived from a European, and specifically Dutch, point of view.

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News

October 16, 2012: I have been invited to give a talk at the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems in May, 2013. The title of my talk will be Quantifying Finite-Time Transport in
Aperiodic Flows, and will focus on 3D applications of the action-flux theory developed during my PhD. An important aspect of this talk will be to highlight a useful generalization of the original transitory theory that allows accurate finite-time flux computation in systems with arbitrary, i.e. non-transitory, time dependence.
September 11, 2012: I have begun work under my Fulbright Fellowship at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Check out this preliminary simulation showing how fluid is mixed in the rotated-arc mixer. My goal is to rigorously compute transport between coherent structures of a transitory version of this flow, and to use the results of these computations to inform design modifications that will further boost the energy-efficiency of the device.
August 20, 2012: My manuscript, "Transport in Transitory, Three-Dimensional, Liouville Flows" was accepted to the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems after minor revisions. This will be my second publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
April 5, 2012: I have been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Fellowship to study at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. A press release from the University of Colorado, Boulder can be found HERE, and one in Boulder's Daily Camera can be found HERE. See the January 19th news entry for more details on the proposed project. I'm very excited and honored to be a part of this prestigious program! Special thanks go to all those who have helped prepare me for this amazing experience!
March 16, 2012: I submitted a manuscript entitled "Transport in Transitory, Three-Dimensional, Liouville Flows" to the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems, written jointly with my advisor, Dr. James D. Meiss at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The preprint on arXiv.org can be found HERE.
February 8, 2012: I gave a 50-minute talk entitled Transport in 3D Time-Dependent Dynamical Systems at the Dynamics/Complex Systems Seminar of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. [ PDF ]
January 19, 2012: I have been named a finalist for the 2012 Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship Program. My proposed project aims to improve the energy efficiency of industrial mixing devices, most notably, the rotated arc mixer, via computational modeling and simulation within the framework of transitory dynamical systems. The proposed work is to be performed jointly with Dr. Michel F. M. Speetjens at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and my current Ph.D. advisor Dr. James D. Meiss at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
November 2, 2011: I gave a 45-minute talk entitled Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems at the Fluid Dynamics Seminar at the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. [ PDF ]
June 2011: The 20-minute minisymposium talk entitled Coherent Structures and Transport in Transitory Systems that I presented at the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems in Snowbird, Utah on Sunday May 22, 2012 is now freely available on the web. The talk is available both as an audio recording with synchronized slides and as a PDF document with slides only.
May 10, 2011: I gave a 50-minute talk entitled Quantifying Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems in the Computational Science Seminar at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. [ PDF ]
February 2011: My paper on Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems was the most downloaded paper for the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems in February of 2011. It was also the 20th most downloaded paper across all SIAM journals.
January 24-28, 2011: I attended the Physics of Mixing Workshop at the Lorentz Center of Leiden University, The Netherlands. I gave a 17-minute talk entitled Quantifying Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems. [ PDF ]
January 2011: I have published my first peer-reviewed journal article, entitled Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems, in the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems. If you are interested in reading the paper but do not have access to an academic license for this journal, please email me for a preprint. Alternatively, you may find the arXiv.org version HERE.
May 21-23, 2010: I presented a poster entitled Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems at the Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics conference at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. [ PDF ]
October 15, 2009: I presented a 50-minute talk entitled Adaptive Tracking of Lagrangian Coherent Structures in the Dynamical Systems seminar of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. [ PDF ]
September 2009: I've been featured on the University of Colorado's graduate school website.