Freedman CMSA Seminar Speaker: Slava Dzhenzher, MIPT Title: Adversarial KA Abstract: Regarding the representation theorem of Kolmogorov and Arnold (KA) as an algorithm for representing or «expressing» functions, we test its robustness by analyzing its ability to withstand adversarial attacks. We find KA to be robust to countable collections of continuous adversaries, but unearth a […]
Colloquium Speaker: Peter Sarnak, IAS & Princeton University Title: Bass-Note Spectra of locally uniform geometries Abstract: We formulate and report on the problem of the Bass-Note Spectrum of an invariant operator as one varies over locally uniform geometries. In the Euclidean setting this recasts classical problems of Mahler from the geometry of numbers in a new […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speakers: Anadil Saeed Rao (Northeastern) and Vasily Krylov (CMSA/Harvard) Title: Algebraic approach to the bow construction Abstract: Anadil will finish his part of the talk. Vasily will then explain how to understand moduli spaces of instantons on R^4, monopoles on R^3, and instantons on Taub-NUT spaces algebraically as so-called bow varieties. We […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Han Shao, Harvard CMSA Title: Incentives for data sharing in federated learning Abstract: Federated learning has recently emerged as a powerful approach for enabling collaboration across large populations of learning agents. However, agents may have incentives to defect from the collaboration—that is, to withdraw or contribute less data than expected—due to the […]
Quantum Field Theory and Physical Mathematics Seminar
Colloquium Speaker: Ariel Procaccia, Harvard University Title: Thinking Outside the Ballot Box Abstract: How should one design unprecedented democratic processes capable of handling enormous sets of alternatives like all possible policies, bills, or statements? I argue that this challenge can be addressed through a framework called generative social choice, which fuses the rigor of social choice theory […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar
Member Seminar Speaker: Sergiy Verstyuk, Harvard CMSA Title: Asset pricing with heterogeneous agents Abstract: This talk will introduce the basics of continuous-time finance, discuss important existing theories and models, as well as present some new asset pricing results in a setting with many heterogeneous investors. (Joint work with Puskar Mondal.)
Quantum Field Theory and Physical Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Nikita Sopenko, IAS Title: An index for 2d invertible phases of quantum many-body systems
Colloquium Speaker: Anna Seigal, Harvard University Title: Factorizations for data analysis Abstract: We can find structure in data by factoring it into building blocks, which should be interpretable for the context at hand. A classical example is principal component analysis (PCA), which uses the eigendecomposition of the covariance matrix to find axes of variation in a dataset. Starting from […]
Conference Reports Speaker: Hugo Cui, Harvard CMSA Title: Report on the Perimeter Institute Theory+AI Workshop Abstract: I will give a survey and brief summary of some of the talks given at the Theory+AI Workshop: Theoretical Physics for AI event organized by Perimeter Institute in April, on approaches to machine learning theory inspired from physics. Link : https://events.perimeterinstitute.ca/event/993/
Member Seminar Speaker: Samy Jelassi, CMSA Title: Echo Chamber: RL Post-training Amplifies Behaviors Learned in Pretraining Abstract: Reinforcement Learning has become a crucial step in training state-of-the-art language models such as DeepSeek-R1 for solving mathematical problems. In this talk, I will first review the mechanisms of Reinforcement Learning fine-tuning. Then, I will present a systematic end-to-end […]