Math Across Campus Colloquium: Simon Levin

The continual increase in the human population and our demands on the Earth's limited resources, raises the urgent mandate of understanding the degree to which our actions are sustainable. This is an enormous scientific challenge and mathematics provides a common language to meet this challenge across disciplines. Mathematical tools help in understanding the collective dynamics of systems from bacterial biofilms to bird flocks and fish schools to ecosystems and the biosphere. They also provide ways to resolve the game-theoretic challenges of achieving cooperation among individuals and among nations in providing for our common future.