A collaborative program has recently been established between research teams in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Delaware and the Department of Mathematics in the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, the premier scientific institution in France. This program will focus on the use of qualitative methods in electromagnetic inverse scattering theory and will last for five years with funding being provided by the French "Institut National de Recherche de Informatique en Automatique" (INRIA). In particular, funding will be available for the exchange of graduate students, postdoctoral students and faculty members during this period. The research team at Delaware is headed by Professor Fioralba Cakoni and at Ecole Polytechnique by Dr. Houssem Haddar.

The collaboration between the inverse scattering group of F. Cakoni, D. Colton and P. Monk at the University of Delaware and H. Haddar at INRIA was initiated by the appointment of Dr. Haddar to a Post-Doc position at the University of Delaware in 2001 followed by continuous collaboration since then. This collaboration has been intense and fruitful: it has led to the development of the linear sampling method in inverse electromagnetic scattering theory, the introduction of the gap reciprocity method for the detection of buried objects and an investigation of the basic theory of transmission eigenvalues and their application in electromagnetic inverse scattering theory. The research team at Delaware together with Dr. Haddar at INRIA has now become recognized as among the leading researchers in the world in the emerging field of qualitative methods in electromagnetic inverse scattering theory. The present program between the research groups at the University of Delaware and the Ecole Polytechnique is designed to encourage further progress in this field as well as to facilitate interaction with the active optimization group at the Ecole Polytechnique.

Article created: December 10, 2007