During the 2025–26 academic year, the CMSA will be hosting a Member Seminar, organized by Iacopo Brivio and Lorenzo Riva.
This seminar will take place weekly on Fridays from 12:00–1:00 pm Eastern Time.
The schedule will be updated as talks are confirmed.
Member Seminar Speaker: Samy Jelassi Title: An introduction to mixture of experts in deep learning Abstract: Scale has opened new frontiers in natural language processing – but at a high cost. Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) have been proposed as a path to even larger and more capable language models. They select different parameters for each incoming example. By […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Juven Wang Title: Open Problems in Physics and Novel Solutions from Math Abstract: (1) How do neutrinos obtain tiny mass and oscillate between e, \mu, \tau three flavors? What consists of Dark Matter? What causes leptogenesis and baryogenesis? (2) Why the Parity Symmetry is violated in the weak interaction? How do we quantum mechanically regularize and […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Alejandro Poveda Title: On compactness phenomena Abstract: In this presentation I shall be preoccupied with compactness phenomena in set theory. Compactness is the phenomenon by which the local properties of a mathematical structure determine its global behavior. This phenomenon is intrinsic to the very architecture of the mathematical universe and manifests to us in a […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Iacopo Brivio (Harvard) Title: Anti-Iitaka conjecture in positive characteristic Abstract: Given a smooth projective variety, its Kodaira dimension kappa(K_X) is an important invariant that measures the rate of growth of m-pluricanonical forms as a function of m. It serves as an higher-dimensional generalization of the genus of a Riemann surface. If f : X […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Freid Tong (Harvard CMSA) Title: On complete Calabi-Yau metrics and Monge-Ampere equations Abstract: Calabi-Yau metrics are central objects in K\"ahler geometry and also string theory. The existence of Calabi-Yau metrics on compact manifolds was answered by Yau in his solution of the Calabi conjecture, but the situation in the non-compact setting is much more delicate, and many questions related to the existence […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Benjamin McKenna (Harvard) Title: The spectrum of some nonlinear random matrices Abstract: Modern data science often requires one to consider "nonlinear random matrices," a broad term for random-matrix models whose construction involves a nonlinear function applied entrywise. Such models are typically far from classical random matrix theory, and in principle entrywise nonlinearities can affect the […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Damian van de Heisteeg (Harvard CMSA) Title: Symmetries and algebraicity in the flux landscape Abstract: In this talk I consider potentials coming from fluxes in string theory. The minima of these potentials trace out special loci in the moduli space of Calabi-Yau manifolds. I discuss the structure that underlies these minima from a Hodge-theoretic […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Uri Kol (Harvard CMSA) Title: Integrability and Hidden Symmetries in Black Hole Dynamics Abstract: The last decade has produced a number of remarkable discoveries, such as the first direct observation of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration and the first black hole image taken by the Event Horizon Telescope. These discoveries mark the beginning of a […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Tomer Ezra (Harvard CMSA) Title: Contract Design in Combinatorial Settings Abstract: We study two combinatorial settings of the contract design problem, in which a principal wants to delegate the execution of a costly task. In the first setting, the principal delegates the task to an agent that can take any subset of a […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Dan Freed (Harvard Mathematics and CMSA) Title: Symmetry in quantum field theory Abstract: In joint work with Greg Moore and Constantin Teleman we show how ideas and techniques in topological field theory apply to the study of symmetry in quantum field theory. I will discuss how this came about, beginning with […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Chuck Doran (Harvard CMSA) Title: Modularity and Fibrations in Mirror Symmetry Abstract: We will introduce appearances of modularity in the study both of families of Calabi-Yau threefolds and of their enumerative invariants. An important role is played by the structure of fibrations and the DHT fibration-degeneration mirror correspondence, which clarifies how these notions […]
CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Farzan Vafa Title: Phase diagram and confining strings in a minimal model of nematopolar matter Abstract: We investigate a minimal model of a nematopolar system. We analytically uncover a phase diagram consisting of a locked phase where the polar order and nematic order are locked, and unlocked phases which could be […]