I was in Bristol last week, attending the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium. I was a plenary speaker, which was a nice honour. Plenary speakers give a longer talk to a larger audience than most speakers (who are in parallel sessions), and travel and accommodation is covered by the conference. My talk was "Enthalpy Methods for Moving Boundary Value Problems", covering a number of research projects of mine over the years with three graduate students. The motivating models describe mass and heat transfer that includes phase change (fuel cell electrodes, sea ice). There are boundaries between regions with different phases (ice, brine, ice/bine mixture) that Enthalpy type methods can capture on a fixed grid. The talk was well received. There is a style to much of British Applied Mathematics that I admire and have tried to emulate: with an effort at modelling an application with the minimal complexity needed to give application insight, often with asymptotic and computational analysis. It was great to be able to show my work to this audience.
They put me up in a hotel downtown, and the day began with a Full English Breakfast. The conference venue was at the University of West England. The conference organizers provided us with bus passes and it was an easy trip on a double decker bus. Riding on the second floor of a bus never gets tired.
