Dr Hinke Osinga
Department of Engineering Mathematics
University of Bristol, UK
My adventures in mathematics, and dynamical systems
in particular, started at the University
of Groningen, the Netherlands. After obtaining a PhD in 1996, I
held postdoctoral research contracts at the
Geometry Center, University of
Minnesota in Minneapolis, and
Caltech, Pasadena. In January
2000 I joined the University of
Exeter as a lecturer. I took up a lectureship at the
University of Bristol in March
2001, and was promoted to Reader in August 2005. In April 2004 I became
Portal Editor-in-Chief of
DSWeb and I am Section
Chief Editor of its quarterly newsletter DSWeb Magazine since the
start of this SIAM web portal initiative in April 2001. In November
2005 I was elected Secretary of the SIAM activity group on dynamical
systems.
My research interest is in dynamical systems. I
hold an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (2005-2010) on Global
Invariant Manifolds: Applications, Critical Boundaries and Global
Bifurcations. Indeed, I use numerical computation, visualisation,
and animation to understand the behaviour of dynamical systems, in
particular in parameter-dependent settings where global bifurcations
of invariant manifolds occur. I like to apply these techniques both in
the context of (global) bifurcation theory and applications in
engineering and biology. Probably my best known research activity is
the computation and visualisation of the Lorenz manifold, the
global stable manifold of the origin of the famous Lorenz system
(jointly with
Bernd Krauskopf).
Images of this manifold featured on the
London
Underground (2000), on the cover of Volume 17 of
Nonlinearity
(2004), and on the covers of various issues of journals, books, and
even as the Equadiff 2003
conference logo.
My research turned into a serious hands-on activity
when Bernd and I realised that the computer output of our algorithms
could be read as crochet instructions. The first crocheted Lorenz
manifold came into existence in May 2003, but more followed after
the crochet instructions were published as part of the scientific
paper in
The
Mathematical Intelligencer. For more information, pictures,
and animations, please, visit our dedicated website
Crocheting the
Lorenz manifold.
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