Multiple time scales in nature and an approach to study them

Multiple time scales are ubiquitous in nature and many phenomena exhibit complicated processes involving a wide span of time scales. Sometimes, it suffices to understand each of such processes on their own clocks. However, many other times these processes are so closely intertwined that separating them does not capture the complexity of their behavior. In this talk I will provide an overview of what is called "Geometric Singular Perturbation Theory", which is a mathematical framework that helps us understand dynamical systems with multiple time scales. I will also provide a brief description of fundamental and applied research open-problems in the field.