Past Events

Consider a poker game where you have to mix the deck of cards between two turns. How (many times) should you shuffle it to prevent any cheating? In this talk we will introduce the theory of mixing times, and explain how representation theory can be...

Partitions arise in linear algebra as Smith normal forms of finite DVR-modules. This viewpoint has given rise to several important objects in symmetric function theory; they are indexed by partitions. What if we replace the DVR by other rings? The...

We study the moduli space of certain heterotic string theories defined via complex non--Kahler 3-folds with a holomorphic vector bundle that has a connection that is Hermitian Yang-Mills. A consideration of symmetries naturally leads to fibering the...

The basis of protein localization to membraneless compartments within cells has been a longstanding question that is increasingly thought to reflect biological phase separation, but other strategies may exist. To this end, the presentation will show...

By using an identity relating a sum to an integral, we obtain a family of identities for the averages $M(X)=\sum_{n\leq X} \mu(n)$ and $m(X)=\sum_{n\leq X} \mu(n)/n$. Further, by choosing some specific families, we study two summatory functions...

In this talk, I introduce several first- and second-order models for self-collective behaviour on general manifolds and discuss their emergent behaviors. For the first-order model, we consider attractive-repulsive and purely attractive interaction...

From a directed graph $Q$, called a quiver, one can construct what is known as a quiver variety $Y_Q$, an algebraic variety defined as a quotient of a vector space by a group defined in terms of $Q$. A mutation of a quiver is an operation that...

The backtracking line-search is an effective technique to automatically tune the step-size in smooth optimization. It guarantees similar performance to using the theoretically optimal step-size. Many approaches have been developed to instead tune per...

In this talk I will explain how to obtain a local to global principle for expected values over free ℤ-modules of finite rank. We use the same philosophy as Ekedhal’s Sieve for densities, later extended and improved by Poonen and Stoll in their local...

Zero forcing is a type of graph propagation based on the color-change rule: Given graph $G$, if each vertex of $G$ is colored either white or blue, and vertex $v$ is a blue vertex with only one white neighbor $w$, then change the color of $w$ to blue...