Faculty Profile

Photograph of Lai-Sang Young

Lai-Sang Young

Henry & Lucy Moses Professor of Science
Professor of Mathematics
lsy@cims.nyu.edu
212-998-3286
Warren Weaver Hall, Office 702

Education

Ph.D., Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, USA, 1978.
M.S., Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, USA, 1976.
B.A., Mathematics, University of Wisconsin, USA, 1973.

Research Interests

My area of research is Dynamical Systems, a branch of modern mathematics concerned with time evolutions of natural and iterative processes. I have worked mostly with chaotic systems. Among my favorite topics are Lyapunov exponents, entropy, fractal dimension, strange attractors, random perturbations, and rates of correlation decay. I have also worked with concrete models including particle systems (billiards) and kicked oscillators. In the last 10+ years, I have become more interested in applications, and my focus has shifted toward large systems, to systems with both deterministic and stochastic components, and systems that are out of equilibrium. More recently I have expanded my research to include Theoretical Neuroscience.

Selected Publications

L.S. Young, "Statistical properties of dynamical systems with some hyperbolicity", Annals of Mathematics 147, 585-650 (1998)
Q.D. Wang and L.S. Young, "Toward a theory of rank one attractors", Annals of Mathematics 167, no.2, 349-480 (2008)
A. Rangan and L.S. Young, "Emergent dynamics in a model of visual cortex", Journal of Computational Neuroscience 35, no. 2, 155-167 (2013)

Research Groups