VU Mathematics Department participates in NWA consortium on Emergence at all scales

An interdisciplinary consortium of mathematicians, physicists and cosmologists has received 7.1M euros from NWO to answer fundamental questions on the emergence of space, time and matter, from the smallest to the largest scales. VU mathematicians Christian Bick and Bob Rink will lead the work package “Collective behavior in networks and life-like matter” of the consortium. Exploiting nonlinear dynamical systems theory, they will develop new mathematics that will be used by soft matter physicists from Utrecht University and AMOLF to design active and intelligent materials. Such materials, that can move and think autonomously, are used for example in robotics, smart sensoring, and smart prosthetics. One PhD student of the consortium will be based at the VU, while a Postdoc working on emergence in social science will spend an extended period at the VU math department.