Soft Robotics and Stem Cells. What IKBFU Mathematics Center has Achieved

The Sofia Kovalevskaya North-West Center for Mathematical Research at 
Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University celebrated 2 years of successful being. 
Valeria Rodionova, Head of the Smart Materials Digital Doppelganger Laboratory 
of the Center, Director of the Higher School for Interdisciplinary Research and 
Engineering at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, told RIA Novosti about 
the challenges and achievements of the Center.

— What "novelties" does mathematics provide to applied research today?

— In natural science, math allows to describe a set of experimental data, and on 
the other hand, to build up models for changes prediction in a particular physical 
system.
Today, mathematical modeling in physics, which our center is engaged in, has 
been "joined" by various artificial intelligence (AI) systems. They significantly 
shorten the cycle of experimental research.

— What is the practical relevance of mathematical modeling and AI?

—  Let me give an example from Materials science. In the past, in order to create a 
permanent magnet with a given property, there was a search for the composition by 
brute force. Each combination was crushed, alloyed, processed, and its properties 
tested. That could take months. Now this problem is solved much more elegantly: a 
mathematical model provides a framework for a complete computer search of 
possible compositions and properties of the material. With a large enough data set 
of component characteristics, new compositions can be immediately predicted 
using AI. Modeling, including AI-assisted modeling, has a similar effect in other 
areas.

 — What areas of research are conducted at your center?

—  We solve problems from different fields: materials science, optics, biology, 
dark matter, astrophysics, magnetic phenomena, modeling of nonlinear systems 
and modeling of plasma physics, and a number of others. Our center unites 
specialists from IKBFU and Pskov State University.