Intensive care medicine, fish that see with electricity and geophysics...

What do these have in common? Weakly electric fish see in dark or murky water using electrosensing. Geophysicists use electric and electromagnetic fields to probe the earth and in intensive care medicine electrical impedance measurements being are used to monitor the lungs of patient who are on ventilator machines.

The mathematics of Inverse Problems is what brigs these things together and at a meeting at the University of Manchester 15-19 June 2009 mathematicians, physicians, geophysicists and biologists studying weakly electric fish come together. Hopefully sharing information between these communities will lead to breakthroughs in all of these fields.

On Thursday the 18th June 12-1pm (BST) a lecture by Prof Mark Nelson "Electrosensory data acquisition and signal processing strategies in electric fish" will be video-streamed for all to see. Link is here.

If you can't see the recording in FireFox try the MediaPlayerConnectivity plug-in

As the fish are the real experts the School of Mathematics has temporarily set up its own aquarium of weakly electric fish. Details here (including live "fish cam")

We are in the news.

University press release Electric fish could spark health care innovation
BBC News web site Fish + electricity = new treatment. With a video clip of me writing on the board. When I say "momentum" I meant "moment". Got it right on the second take!
The fish and I were interviewd by Caroline Murray at about 8am on Monday 22nd June for the BBC Greater Manchester Radio programme Beswick for Breakfast.
We were on North West Tonight Wed 24th June between 6:30pm and 7pm. Stuart Flinders recorded the piece on Monday 22nd June.

For participants, and those interested in the academic programme see the conference web site

Prof Bill Lionheart, School of mathematics, University of Manchester.