Frameworks in motion: from theory to design and back again

What do umbrellas, folding gates & scissor lifts share? Explore foldable frameworks, Calatrava’s ideas & rigidity theory with Jessica Sidman

What do your umbrella, a folding gate, and a scissor lift have in common? They all involve frameworks made of rigid parts attached at flexible joints and are designed to move with one degree of freedom. In 1981 architect Santiago Calatrava wrote a PhD thesis, "Concerning the Foldability of Space Frames," containing a systematic exploration of the geometry and design of foldable frameworks. I'll discuss some of his constructions and the clever ways he built them and then use his thesis as a jumping off point to explore the Laman-Pollaczek-Geiringer Theorem.

About the speaker: Jessica Sidman loves to work on pure and applied problems at the intersection of computational algebra, algebraic geometry, and combinatorics. Rigidity theory combines aspects of these three fields! She got her start in the subject when an undergraduate doing a thesis on protein folding asked her a question about projective space. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, did postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley and UMass Amherst, and is currently the Brian E. Boyle Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Amherst College.