Past Events

In this talk, I will discuss certain extremal configurations in Q-polynomial distance-regular graphs (or P- and Q-polynomial association schemes), which we call descendents. The descendents of a hypercube are precisely its faces. I will show how they...

The rational points of an abelian variety form a finitely generated group and computing the rank of this group is a hard and central problem in arithmetic geometry. One method, which follows the original proof of Mordell and Weil of the finiteness of...

We study a single-period optimal transport problem with a cost function given by a general bilinear form and a backward martingale constraint. The role of Kantorovich potentials is played by Fitzpatrick functions. The dual problem is a pseudo...

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is the standard optimization method for training machine learning (ML) models. SGD requires a step-size that depends on unknown problem-dependent quantities, and the choice of this step-size heavily influences the...

Peter Borewein empirically discovered quite a number of mysteries involving sign patterns of coefficients of polynomials of the form $f_{p,s,n}(q):=\prod_{j=0}^{n} \prod_{k=1}^{p-1} (1-q^{pj+k})^{s}$ ($p$ a prime and $s,n \in \mathbb{N}$). In the...

Structural Ramsey theory generalizes classical Ramsey theory by considering classes of finite sets with additional structure (such as finite groups or finite partial orders) and colourings of their substructures. When the class satisfies an...

Around 2008, Schramm conjectured that the critical probability pc of a transitive graph is entirely determined by the local geometry of the graph, subject to the global constraint that pc1. In other words, if Gn is a sequence of transitive graphs...

This is joint work with Uriya First. Azumaya algebras are objects that are locally isomorphic to matrix algebras—over a topological space X, they are bundles of matrix algebras. If the base space X is endowed with a self-map of order 2 (which may be...

While mathematical models have classically been used in the study of physics and engineering, recently, they have become important tools in other fields such as biology, ecology, and sociology. In this talk I will discuss the use of partial...