The Center for Interdisciplinary Mathematics serves as a focus for interdisciplinary studies by faculty, graduate and undergraduate students at the Pennsylvania State University. Its primary aim is to foster scientific interaction and collaborations between the Mathematics Department and other scientific and technical institutes, widening the use and appreciation of modern mathematical techniques as effective research tools among a variety of disciplines.
The scientific activity of its members currently covers a number of core topics:
- Mathematical models of traffic flow.
- Optimal control and game theoretical methods in economics and finance.
- Collective motion and self-organization in living world.
- Pattern formation in evolutionary games.
- Superconductivity and superfluidity.
- Complex fluids and soft matter.
- Electrophysiology, charged particle transport.
- Controlled shape growth in biology.
A major goal of the Center is to attract students with strong interdisciplinary interests, and provide them with new training and research opportunities. Toward this goal, the Center organizes lecture series and workshops specifically addressed to young researchers, and facilitates the joint supervision of Ph.D. theses, directed by a mathematician together with a researcher from a partner discipline.