Middle East Technical University

Department of Industrial Engineering

Seminar

Friday, Nov. 6th, 2009, 4:00 pm

IE Building, Blue Auditorium (Ground Floor)

A Brief Introduction to Models of Nonlinear Systems Dynamics

Sencer Yeralan

University of Florida

We give a few examples of nonlinear dynamical systems and review the various approaches to the mathematical formulation of their behavior. Besides the classical differential equations, we will focus mostly on the models that have received some attention in the past few decades. These include coupled map lattices and cellular automata.  The talk concludes with a rudimentary digression into the philosophy-of-science aspects of modeling.

Sencer Yeralan is a 1978 METU IE Alumnus. He received a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems

Engineering from the University of Florida in 1983.  After being a faculty member at the 

University of Missouri and the University of Florida for about 15 years, Dr. Yeralan left his

full-time academic position to pursue private interests in automation and control, designing

hardware and software for embedded systems. In parallel, Dr. Yeralan joined the Department 

of Agricultural and Biological Engineering as a Courtesy Professor in 1997, where he continued

to contribute to research activities and teach a single course each year without compensation. 

Dr. Yeralan has been at METU for a little over a year to develop courses in sustainable systems 

engineering with support from TUBITAK and from the University of Florida.

Refreshments: 3:45 p.m

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