Past Events

E.g., Jun 1, 2025

Nikita Gladkov

UCLA
The Bunkbed Conjecture is False

November 20, 2024

We discuss the Bunkbed Conjecture, a long-standing conjecture about connection probabilities in percolation. We describe a recent counterexample to this conjecture, a graph on 7772 vertices, and describe its structure. Read more

  • Probability

Dr. James Glazier

Indiana University
Math-Bio Seminar: Dr. James Glazier's Visit and Graduate Presentations

November 20, 2024

The development, homeostasis, and dysfunction of tissues emerge from the interactions between cells, their extracellular environment, and the molecular signals that regulate them. Virtual Tissues are physics-based, multi-scale, agent-based models designed to simulate the behavior of cells and... Read more

  • Fluids
  • Mathematical Biology
  • Mathematical Physics
  • Scientific Computing

Dr. James Glazier

Indiana University
Math-Bio Seminar: Dr. James Glazier's Visit and Graduate Presentations

November 20, 2024

The development, homeostasis, and dysfunction of tissues emerge from the interactions between cells, their extracellular environment, and the molecular signals that regulate them. Virtual Tissues are physics-based, multi-scale, agent-based models designed to simulate the behavior of cells and... Read more

  • Fluids
  • Mathematical Biology
  • Mathematical Physics
  • Scientific Computing

Andy Hsiao

UBC
Mixed Volume of Matroids

November 19, 2024

ESB 4133 (PIMS library)

Matroids are combinatorial objects that abstract the notion of independence. Given any matroid, Feichtner and Yuzvinsky defined a graded commutative ring called the Chow ring, inspired by algebraic geometry. To each matroid, we can define a linear map called the mixed volume of the matroid,... Read more

  • Discrete mathematics

Jonathan Yang

UBC
Mixed volumes of matroids

November 18, 2024

Math 126, UBC Math department

Matroids are combinatorial objects that abstract the notion of independence. The motivating examples are matroids arising from vector configurations. An important tool for studying matroids is the associated Chow ring. A recent result of Adiprasito, Huh, and Katz is that Chow rings arising from... Read more

  • Algebra and Algebraic geometry

Jacob Fox

Stanford. (Hosts: J Zahl and J Solymosi)
Advances on regularity methods and its applications

November 15, 2024

ESB 2012 and Zoom

Szemerédi's regularity lemma and its variants are some of the most powerful tools in combinatorics. For example, Szemerédi used an early version in the proof of his celebrated theorem on long arithmetic progressions in dense sets of integers. It has also played a central role in extremal... Read more

Abbas Maarefparvar

University of Lethbridge
The Ostrowski Quotient for a finite extension of number fields

November 15, 2024

ESB 4133 & Online

For a number field $K$, the P\'olya group of $K$, denoted by $Po(K)$, is the subgroup of the ideal class group of $K$ generated by the classes of the products of maximal ideals of $K$ with the same norm. In this talk, after reviewing some results concerning $Po(K)$, I will generalize this notion... Read more

  • Number Theory

Amit Singer

Princeton. (Host: K Dao Duc)
Mathematics of Cryo-Electron Microscopy

November 8, 2024

ESB 2012

Single particle cryo-EM is an increasingly popular technique for determining 3-D molecular structures at high resolution. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three of the pioneers of cryo-EM, and already in the early stages of the global pandemic, cryo-EM was successfully applied to... Read more

Emily Quesada-Herrera

University of Lethbridge
On the vertical distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function

November 8, 2024

ESB 4133 & Online

In 1973, assuming the Riemann hypothesis (RH), Montgomery studied the vertical distribution of zeta zeros, and conjectured that they behave like the eigenvalues of some random matrices. We will discuss some models for zeta zeros - starting from the random matrix model but going beyond it - and... Read more

  • Number Theory

Behrang Forghani

College of Charleston
Harmonic measures and Poisson boundaries

November 6, 2024

The Poisson boundary of a random walk on a group is a probability space used to study the long-term behavior of the random walk. Because the group naturally acts on the Poisson boundary, various questions regarding the structure of this action can be studied. In this talk, I will show that the... Read more

  • Probability