Past Events

E.g., Apr 29, 2025

Deanna Needell

UCLA
Randomized Kaczmarz methods with beyond-Krylov convergence

February 6, 2025

MATH 126

Randomized Kaczmarz methods form a family of linear system solvers that converge by repeatedly projecting their iterates onto randomly sampled equations. While effective in some contexts, such as highly over-determined least squares, Kaczmarz methods are traditionally deemed secondary to Krylov... Read more

Yucheng Liu

UBC
The torus plateau for the high-dimensional Ising model

February 5, 2025

We report recent progress in the study of statistical mechanical models on the discrete torus (finite box in the lattice with periodic boundary conditions). In high dimensions, the torus two-point function near the infinite-volume critical point levels off at large distance to a constant called... Read more

  • Probability

Dr. Louis Du Plessis


Insights into infectious disease dynamics across time and space with phylogenetics and phylodynamics

February 4, 2025

Room 102: Lecture Theatre - Michael Smith Laboratories

Many viruses evolve fast enough to accumulate significant genetic diversity over the course of an outbreak, allowing us to build trees that represent the evolutionary history of virus lineages. Phylodynamic models allow us to infer the epidemiological dynamics behind an outbreak, such as rates... Read more

  • Mathematical Biology

Federico Scavia

CNRS and Université Sorbonne Paris Nord
Galois representations modulo p that do not lift modulo p^2

February 3, 2025

For every finite group H and every finite H-module A, we determine the subgroup of negligible classes in H^2(H,A), in the sense of Serre, over fields with enough roots of unity. As a consequence, we show that for every odd prime p and every field F containing a primitive p-th root of unity,... Read more

  • Algebra and Algebraic geometry

Davesh Maulik

MIT
D-equivalence conjecture for varieties of K3^[n]-type

February 3, 2025

The $D$-equivalence conjecture of Bondal and Orlov predicts that birational Calabi-Yau varieties have equivalent derived categories of coherent sheaves. I will explain how to prove this conjecture for hyperkahler varieties of $K3^{[n]}$ type (i.e. those that are deformation equivalent to Hilbert... Read more

  • Intercontinental Moduli and Algebraic Geometry Seminar

Federico Ardila

San Francisco State University
The geometry of matroids

January 31, 2025

ESB 2012 and Zoom

The theory of matroids originated in linear algebra and graph theory, and has deep connections with many other areas, including field theory, matching theory, submodular optimization, Lie combinatorics, and total positivity. Matroids capture the combinatorial essence that these different... Read more

Federico Ardila

San Francisco State University
The Combinatorics of CAT(0) Cube Complexes

January 30, 2025

Math 126

There are numerous contexts where a discrete system moves according to local, reversible moves. The configuration space, which contains all possible states of the system, is often a CAT(0) cube complex. When this is the case, we can use techniques from geometric group theory and poset theory to... Read more

  • Discrete mathematics

Anita Layton

University of Waterloo
The influence of sex and timing in physiological systems

January 28, 2025

MATH 126

Imagine someone having a heart attack. Do you visualize the dramatic Hollywood portrayal of a heart attack, in which a man collapses, grabbing his chest in agony? Even though heart disease is the leading killer of women worldwide, the misconception that heart disease is a men’s disease has... Read more

Dr. Brandon Schlomann


Illuminating within-host infection dynamics in space and time

January 28, 2025

Room 102: Lecture Theatre - Michael Smith Laboratories

A fundamental challenge in infection biology is predicting the dynamics of within-host microbial growth and immune activation. However, data typically comes as static snapshots, limiting our ability to test theories. Therefore, we established live imaging of a powerful model organism: the larval... Read more

  • Mathematical Biology

Sebastien Picard

UBC
Calabi-Yau threefolds crossing nodal singularities

January 27, 2025

Math 126

We will review the conifold transition, which is a topological surgery for Calabi-Yau threefolds. The process involves a deformation of complex structure and a small resolution of nodal singularities. We discuss the geometrization of this process and its study by complex analytic and... Read more

  • Algebra and Algebraic geometry