Collective Dynamics in Biological and Social Systems

Models for active matter and their applications to cell motility

Qi Wang

University of South Carolina and Beijing Computational Science Research Center

Models for active matter systems can be formulated in the form of kinetic theories or continuum models in a general formalism following the Onsager's principle. The continuum models can be viewed as the low rank approximations to the kinetic theories in terms of the low moments of the probability distribution functions. Depending on the interaction with the environment, active matter models can be formulated in either the dry form in which momentum conservation is not preserved, or the wet form where momentum conservation is maintained. In all cases, the kinetic theory emerges as the mesoscopic scale formulation for active matter systems. In this talk, I will discuss a class of active models and then discuss their numerical discretizations using the property preserving strategy and applications to model cell motility and related dynamics.