Monday, April 25th, 2005
2:30pm - 3:30pm, in Science 2-065

Irene Hueter

UMass Boston and CUNY

When phase transitions and fractals emerge in infectious diseases and stochastic growth models

Abstract: Cancer cells, viruses, and bacteria have been studied for their ability to evolve into resistance under treatment. The multitype branching processes that are often used in the analysis do not take into account the spatial geometry. I will talk about the contact process, an interacting particle system which can serve as a model for cancer cells or infectious diseases, in which the spatial geometry is maintained. Results on the growth behavior of the population over space and time and the phase transitions will be discussed. I will explain where fractal sets show up and describe the common analytic mathematical tools that fractals and the contact process share.