Past Events

E.g., Jun 25, 2025

Jordan Ellenberg

University of Wisconsin–Madison
Niven & Hugh Morris Lecture | From malaria to ChatGPT: the birth and strange life of the random walk

May 27, 2025

GEOG 100

Between 1905 and 1910 the idea of the random walk, now a major topic in applied math, was invented simultaneously and independently by multiple people in multiple countries for completely different purposes, from mosquito control to physics to finance to winning a theological argument (really!)... Read more

Jordan Ellenberg

University of Wisconsin - Madison
Smyth's conjecture and a non-deterministic Hasse principle

May 26, 2025

ESB 4133

The matrix ( 3 -3 4 -4 5 -5 0 0 4 -4 -3 3 0 0 5 -5 -5 5 0 0 -3 3 -4 4 ) has an interesting property. Can you see what it is?

In case this puzzle is not enough information about the talk: I will explain how to prove a conjecture of Smyth from 1986 about linear relations between Galois... Read more

  • Number Theory

Matthew Tointon

University of Bristol
Structure, expansion and probability in vertex-transitive graphs

May 19, 2025

MATX 1101

Celebrated theorems of Gromov, Trofimov and Coulhon-Saloff-Coste combine to give a remarkable dichotomy for vertex-transitive graphs: such graphs must either resemble highly structured Cayley graphs, or must exhibit "expansion" in a certain sense. This in turn has had a number of striking... Read more

  • Probability


Pacific Northwest Geometry Seminar

May 10, 2025 to May 11, 2025

UBC

The Pacific Northwest Geometry Seminar (PNGS) is a regional meeting for geometers of all kinds. It is held once each academic year.

Schedule:

Saturday May 10, 2025:

8:30 AM - 9:00 AM: Coffee and snacks 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM:... Read more
  • Intercontinental Moduli and Algebraic Geometry Seminar
  • Harmonic Analysis and Fractal Geometry

John Man Shun Ma

Southern University of Science and Technology
Backward Uniqueness results in Extrinsic Geometric Flow

May 7, 2025

MATH 202

In this talk we discuss two backward uniqueness theorems for extrinsic geometric flow of possibly non-compact hypersurfaces in general ambient complete Riemannian manifolds. These are applicable to a wide range of extrinsic geometric flow, including the mean curvature flow, inverse mean... Read more

  • Differential geometry

Cindy Blois

University of Toronto
Building Community in Large Classes

May 7, 2025

MATH 104

Building Community in Large Classes. Read more

  • Mathematics education

Shamil Asgarli

Santa Clara University
Blocking sets and plane curves over finite fields

May 7, 2025

MATH 204

Let Fq be a finite field of order q. A subset B of a projective plane over Fq is called a blocking set if every line defined over Fq intersects B. Given an algebraic plane curve C, under what conditions does the set of Fq-points on C form a blocking set? We show that curves of low degree do not... Read more

  • Number Theory

Theodore Kolokolnikov

Dalhousie University
Large-scale pattern formation for spikes in reaction-diffusion systems

May 7, 2025

MATH 225

Many reaction-diffusion systems exhibit patterns consisting of spikes (or spots), and numerous techniques have been developed over the years to study them. In the limit of many spikes, we develop a mean-field theory to describe an effective spike density. The resulting description consists of... Read more

  • Scientific Computing

Man-Chun Lee

The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Expanding soliton from metric cone

May 7, 2025

MATH 202

In this talk, we will discuss how Ricci flow smoothing can be used to produce expanding Ricci solitons coming out of a metric cone, when the curvature is non-negative. We will discuss how its relation to problem in Hamilton-Lott pinching conjecture. This is based on joint work with Chan and... Read more

  • Differential geometry

Tim Tian

UBC
Organization of Plant Cortical Microtubules

May 7, 2025

MATX 1100

The self-organization of cortical microtubule arrays within plant cells is an emergent phenomenon with important consequences for the synthesis of the cell wall, cell shape, and subsequently the structure of plants. Mathematical modelling and experiments have elucidated the underlying processes... Read more

  • Mathematical Biology