CMSA Q&A Seminar: Shaoyun Bai, MIT
October 7, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

CMSA Q&A Seminar
Speaker: Shaoyun Bai, MIT
Title: What is a virtual fundamental cycle? (ICM Series: On the work of John Pardon)
Abstract: One of Pardon’s important contribution to symplectic topology is a new approach to constructing virtual fundamental cycles/chains for moduli spaces of pseudo-holomorphic maps. As a former PhD student of John, my own research has also been greatly influenced by his work on VFCs. I will try to explain some pieces of this framework and discuss how they are related to some of Pardon’s more recent work.