Micromechanical oscillators are components of many electronic systems that keep track of signal processing and ensure data is moved around without becoming jumbled up. Professor Balachandran and his team at the University of Maryland are exploring how noise can be used to control certain phenomena within arrays of these tiny mechanical oscillators, to change their behaviour and make them operate better than before. Their studies also have important ramifications for macro-scale mechanical systems.

Almost every aspect of the global water cycle involves a mixture of fluids and particles – raindrop formation, ocean currents and water percolation through the soil. This mixture of gas and liquid or liquid and solid causes behaviour that is important to understand, but difficult to predict. This is particularly true when turbulent flow occurs. Dr Lian-Ping Wang at the University of Delaware has developed models and methods that have greatly improved our ability to understand and predict phenomena from localised rainfall patterns to particle transport in industrial processes.

Fluid mechanics is the study of the flows within liquids, gases and plasmas, and the forces that act upon them. Applications involving fluid mechanics are vast, ranging from chemical engineering to astrophysics, and so an accurate understanding is essential for future developments. Professor Richard Miles at Texas A&M University is an esteemed contributor to this field, and his team’s latest breakthrough involves a pioneering way of measuring the velocities of high-speed fluids.

Professor Amnon Besser of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and his colleagues are exploring p-adic numbers – one of the most difficult areas of number theory – in order to solve long-standing open problems bridging several fields of mathematics.

Is it possible for computational modelling to become sufficiently accurate as to replace experiments? This is one of the many questions that Dr Kirk Peterson and his team at Washington State University are working towards answering. As a world-leader in developing Gaussian basis sets for creating increasingly accurate models for the heaviest elements in the Periodic Table, Dr Peterson and his colleagues are finding new approaches for understanding the chemistry and properties of some of the most exotic elements.