Saturday, August 30

Alain

Alain is the Professor of Mathematical Modelling at Oxford U. and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Mathematics. His remit includes things like discrete and continuum mechanics, elasticity, plasticity; the application of mechanics and mathematics to biology; mathematical modelling in physics and engineering and Interesting and otherwise unclassifiable mathematical problems. Basically he gets to pick and choose the cool math shit he wants to do.

Alain is currently modelling how cardamine seeds are dispersed - the plant seed located on the tail of an organic coil that grows, builds tension, then dries and explodes, shooting the seed up to a foot from the flower. Alain is studying the cellular tissue mechanics. 

Alain is also mainly involved with Oxford's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab which recently entered a $100m partnership with Carnegie Mellon.

Zebulon update : A* in maths GSCE and will take the remainder this year; his game app, which he's programmed in his spare time, goes live this autumn.