In the event, of interdisciplinary nature, 26 researchers participated, among them: biologists, physicists, engineers, mathematicians and chemists of polymers.

The Faculty of Mathematics of the Pontifical Catholic University hosted the conference “VARIATIONAL MODELS OF SOFT MATTER”, whose objective was to explore connections between the mathematics of liquid crystals, polymer gels and appearance of singularities in nonlinear elasticity.

The meeting, organized by CAPDE members, Duvan Henao (Pontificia Universidad Católica) and Juan Dávila (Universidad de Chile), brought together more than 25 national and international researchers from the United States, England, Spain, France , Italy and China. They delivered their point of view on topics covering the full spectrum of experimental research, modeling, computational mechanics, numerical analysis and analysis of variation calculations, and partial derivative equations.

Also this event had the participation of professors, postdoctorandos and students of doctorate, masters and undergraduate from the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Universidad de Santiago, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and Universidad de Chile.

According to the CAPDE researcher and academic of the Department of Mathematics of the PUC, Duvan Henao, it was an interdisciplinary conference, in which there were talks of biologists, physicists, chemists, variation specialists, numerical analysts and engineers; Experimental works, model creation, interpretation of computational simulations, analysis of numerical methods, convergence and existence theorems, among others.

In that sense, Duvan Henao emphasized the high level of the presentations, and emphasized the comments of the attendees, who were very satisfied and grateful to incorporate new and diverse visions of the same subject. “In general they thanked us for organize an unusual conference, with the opportunity to contrast different perspectives, meet people from other scientific circles and because apart from the talks there were enough spaces to talk and work on more specific problems,” he said.

Henao stressed that for Chile this congress meant a new step in the process of approaching research groups in engineering, mathematics and nonlinear physics, from four different institutions. “The country needs to generate a critical mass of scientists who interact as much as possible, and not only are they working separately with research centers abroad, so the congress brings a small grain of sand in the right direction,” he said.

The organization of this meeting was a positive instance to visualize the research topics of the Center for Nonlinear Analysis & Partial Differential Equations: the calculus of variations, numerical analysis, the physics of condensed matter (in particular liquid crystals and the study of patterns and singularities in elastic membranes) and the applications of geometry to biology.

“It was a luxury to finally learn from world leaders in these subjects, to share with them during the week and to give them a good impression of the scientific level that we have in Chile,” said the mathematician.