Past Events
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
PIMS-CSC Seminar: Measuring the phonetic similarity between speech sounds
October 16, 2009
Simon Fraser University
This talk demonstrates a new metric for measuring phonetic similarity between speech sounds, based on several types of phonetic data collected for a set of 130 consonants and vowels. Phonetic similarity is frequently invoked for explaining a wide...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
Topology Seminar: Equivariant Lefschetz invariants via analysis
October 15, 2009
University of British Columbia
Equivariant Lefschetz invariants have already appeared in algebraic topology. Here I will show how to approach them using the so-called equivariant KK-theory of Kasparov — the main tool of the new field of noncommutative geometry. I will sketch the...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
Probability Seminar: Combinatorics and Cluster Expansions
October 14, 2009
University of British Columbia
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
Topology Seminar: The moduli spaces of generalized Morse functions
October 14, 2009
University of British Columbia
We study and determine a homotopy type of the moduli space of all generalized Morse functions on d-manifolds for given d. This moduli space is closely connected to the moduli space of all Morse functions studied by Madsen and Weiss and classifying...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
SCAIM Seminar: Iterative regularization or inverse problems
October 13, 2009
University of British Columbia
After an introduction on Tikhonov regularization for linear inverse problems, we will encounter an example from inverse electromyography, where the classical Tikhonov method runs into numerical trouble. We will then look at an alternative approach...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
DG-MP-PDE Seminar: On the best constant in the Moser-Onofri-Aubin Inequality
October 13, 2009
University of British Columbia
Scientific, Seminar
PIMS/WMAX Postdoctoral Colloquium: Parabolic systems with rough initial data
October 8, 2009
University of British Columbia
Abstract: Studying non-smooth geometric objects is a very important and modern research topic in differential geometry and geometric analysis. In particular it is interesting to know to which extent these objects can be approximated by smooth ones.In...
Scientific, Seminar
Topology Seminar: Survey of profinite homotopy theory
October 7, 2009
University of British Columbia
Scientific, Seminar
DG-MP-PDE Seminar: Volume Growth, Brownian motion, and Conservation of the heat kernel on a Riemannian manifold
October 6, 2009
University of British Columbia
Abstract: The minimal heat kernel on a Riemannian manifold is conservative if it integrates to 1. If this is the case, the manifold is said to be stochastically complete. Since the heat kernel is the transition density function of Brownian motion, a...
Scientific, Seminar
SCAIM Seminar: Reconstruction Techniques for Inverse Problems in Microscopy and Tomography
October 6, 2009
University of British Columbia
Abstract: We address the task of reconstructing images corrupted by Poisson noise, which is important in various applications, such as fluorescence microscopy, positronemission- tomography (PET) or astronomical imaging. We focus on reconstruction...