During the 2025–26 academic year, the CMSA will be hosting a Colloquium series, organized by Tomer Ezra, Houcine Ben Dali, Francesco Mori, and Sunghyuk Park.
It will take place on Mondays from 4:30 – 5:30 pm (Eastern Time) in Room G10, CMSA, 20 Garden Street. All CMSA postdocs/members are required to attend the weekly CMSA Colloquium series as well as the weekly CMSA Members’ Seminars.
To subscribe to the CMSA Colloquium Mailing list, please visit this link.
The schedule will be updated as talks are confirmed.
Speaker: Ian Martin (LSE) Title: Sentiment and Speculation in a Market with Heterogeneous Beliefs Abstract: We present a dynamic model featuring risk-averse investors with heterogeneous beliefs. Individual investors have stable beliefs and risk aversion, but agents who were correct in hindsight become relatively wealthy; their beliefs are overrepresented in market sentiment, so “the market” is bullish following good news and […]
Speaker: Philippe Sosoe (Cornell) Title: A sharp transition for Gibbs measures associated to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation Abstract: In 1987, Lebowitz, Rose and Speer (LRS) showed how to construct formally invariant measures for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation on the torus. This seminal contribution spurred a large amount of activity in the area of partial differential equations […]
Speaker: Greg Galloway (University of Miami) Title: On the geometry and topology of initial data sets in General Relativity Abstract: A theme of long standing interest (to the speaker!) concerns the relationship between the topology of spacetime and the occurrence of singularities (causal geodesic incompleteness). Many results concerning this center around the notion of topological censorship, which […]
Speaker: Sonia Jaffe (Microsoft) Title: Quality Externalities on Platforms: The Case of Airbnb Abstract: We explore quality externalities on platforms: when buyers have limited information, a seller's quality affects whether her buyers return to the platform, thereby impacting other sellers' future business. We propose an intuitive measure of this externality, applicable across a range of platforms. Guest Return […]
Speaker: Tatyana Sharpee (Salk Institute for Biological Studies) Title: Hyperbolic geometry of the olfactory space Abstract: The sense of smell can be used to avoid poisons or estimate a food’s nutrition content because biochemical reactions create many by-products. Thus, the presence of certain bacteria in the food becomes associated with the emission of certain volatile compounds. This perspective suggests that […]
Speaker: Sarah Moshary (University of Chicago) Title: Deregulation through Direct Democracy: Lessons from Liquor Abstract: This paper examines the merits of state control versus private provision of spirits retail, using the 2012 deregulation of liquor sales in Washington state as an event study. We document effects along a number of dimensions: prices, product variety, convenience, substitution to other goods, […]
Speaker: Pietro Veronesi (University of Chicago) Title: Inequality Aversion, Populism, and the Backlash Against Globalization Abstract: Motivated by the recent rise of populism in western democracies, we develop a model in which a populist backlash emerges endogenously in a growing economy. In the model, voters dislike inequality, especially the high consumption of "elites." Economic growth exacerbates inequality due to […]
Speaker: Yi-Zhuang You (UCSD) Title: Machine Learning Physics: From Quantum Mechanics to Holographic Geometry Abstract: Inspired by the "third wave" of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning has found rapid applications in various topics of physics research. Perhaps one of the most ambitious goals of machine learning physics is to develop novel approaches that ultimately allows AI to discover new concepts and governing equations of physics from experimental observations. […]
Speaker: Shengwu Li (Harvard) Title: Credible Mechanisms Abstract: Consider an extensive-form mechanism, run by an auctioneer who communicates sequentially and privately with agents. Suppose the auctioneer can deviate from the rules provided that no single agent detects the deviation. A mechanism is credible if it is incentive-compatible for the auctioneer to follow the rules. We study the optimal auctions in which only winners […]
Speaker: Bill Helton (UC San Diego) Title: A taste of noncommutative convex algebraic geometry Abstract: The last decade has seen the development of a substantial noncommutative (in a free algebra) real and complex algebraic geometry. The aim of the subject is to develop a systematic theory of equations and inequalities for (noncommutative) polynomials or rational functions of matrix variables. […]
Speaker: Pavel Etingof (MIT) Title: Double affine Hecke algebras Abstract: Double affine Hecke algebras (DAHAs) were introduced by I. Cherednik in the early 1990s to prove Macdonald's conjectures. A DAHA is the quotient of the group algebra of the elliptic braid group attached to a root system by Hecke relations. DAHAs and their degenerations are now central objects of representation […]
Speaker: Spiro Karigiannis (University of Waterloo) Title: Cohomologies on almost complex manifolds and their applications Abstract: We define three cohomologies on an almost complex manifold (M, J), defined using the Nijenhuis-Lie derivations induced from the almost complex structure J and its Nijenhuis tensor N, regarded as vector-valued forms on M. One of these can be applied to distinguish non-isomorphic non-integrable […]