CMSA Q&A Seminar: Can Math Mend a Broken Heart?

I will discuss an abnormal cardiac rhythm known as T-wave alternans, and a simple feedback control method (time-delay autosynchronization, TDAS) that has been used successfully to suppress alternans experimentally.  Variants of TDAS have been used for chaos control and prevention of period-doubling bifurcation in physical systems.  I will explain how basic ideas from dynamical systems (e.g., the contraction mapping principle and Lyapunov functions) can be used to explore the robustness of TDAS.