Past Events

The mixing time and spectral gap of a random walk on the symmetric group can sometimes be understood in terms of its low dimensional representations (e.g., Aldous' spectral gap conjecture). It turns out that under a mild degree condition involving...

The Polya group of a number field K is a specific subgroup of the ideal class group Cl(K) of K, generated by all classes of Ostrowski ideals of K. In this talk, I will discuss the equality Po(K)=Cl(K) in two directions. First, we will see this...

Tensors are higher-dimensional generalisations of matrices, and likewise the main notion of complexity on matrices - their rank - may be extended to tensors. Unlike in the matrix case however, there is no single canonical notion of rank for tensors...

I will provide an introduction to simplicial sets, which will serve as foundation for the rest of the lecture series. We will discuss examples and a few constructions, such as the function complex and geometric realization.

TBA

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...

We will explore how a Fourier optimization framework may be used to study two classical problems in number theory involving Dirichlet characters: The problem of estimating the least character non-residue; and the problem of estimating the least prime...

Calling all UBC students, staff, faculty, and researchers - all are welcome - FREE to attend! Make sure to register so you don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to hear from a leader in science communication and equity! Join us for a morning...

The tensor category of vertex operator algebras arises from two dimensional conformal field theories and has many applications such as representation theory, topological quantum field theory and quantum computations. A major problem of tensor...

In this talk, we will address areas of recent work centered around the themes of fairness and foundations in machine learning as well as highlight the challenges in this area. We will discuss recent results involving linear algebraic tools for...