The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic claimed around fifty million lives worldwide. Interventions were introduced to reduce the spread of the virus, but these were not based on quantitative assessments of the likely effects of different control strategies. One hundred years later, mathematical modelling is routinely used for forecasting and to help plan interventions during outbreaks in populations of humans, animals and plants.

Have you ever picked up a glass to find that the coaster it was resting on remains stuck to the bottom? If so, then you have experienced the ability of fluid to stick two surfaces together. When the bottom of the glass is wetted, for example by accidentally spilling a drink, then this fluid can fill the gap between the glass and coaster. The surface tension of the liquid then provides a pulling force on the coaster that keeps it attached to the glass.

From nanophotonics to aeroplanes, there are many applications that involve scattering in unbounded domains. Typically, one is interested in situations and geometries where there are no known analytical solutions and one has to resort to numerical algorithms to solve the problem using a computer. Such numerical algorithms should give physically meaningful solutions and hopefully obtain them with the minimal computational cost and time.