Speaker: Yang-Hui He, Oxford University, City University of London and Nankai University

Title: Universes as Big Data, or Machine-Learning Mathematical Structures

Abstract: We review how historically the problem of string phenomenology lead theoretical physics first to algebraic/differetial geometry, and then to computational geometry, and now to data science and AI. With the concrete playground of the Calabi-Yau landscape, accumulated by the collaboration of physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists over the last 4 decades, we show how the latest techniques in machine-learning can help explore problems of physical and mathematical interest, from geometry, to group theory, to combinatorics and number theory.