Alexander West
My name is Alexander West. In May 2024, I started my PhD-studies under the supervision of Dr. Christian Scharrer and Prof. Dr. Stefan Müller. I am interested in the study of the Willmore functional, which assigns to a surface the integral over the mean curvature squared. This is a natural, scaling-invariant choice to describe the total bending of a surface. Closely related is the Helfrich functional, which differs from the Willmore energy by a linear combination of the total mean curvature and the area and finds applications in the study of shapes of lipid bilayer cell membranes. This motivates the study of stationary points of the Willmore energy under constraints on total mean curvature, area and enclosed volume of the surface. I study the interplay between these functionals and the Willmore energy. |
Institute for Applied Mathematics Office: 2.043 |
