Edward Witten (IAS) Title: Isadore Singer’s Work on Analytic Torsion Abstract:  I will review two famous papers of Ray and Singer on analytic torsion written approximately half a century ago. Then I will sketch the influence of analytic torsion in a variety of areas of physics including anomalies, topological field theory, and string theory. This talk is […]

Peter Shor (MIT) Title: Quantum error correcting codes and fault tolerance Abstract: We will go over the fundamentals of quantum error correction and fault tolerance and survey some of the recent developments in the field. Talk chair: Zhengwei Liu Video

Yi MaPhoto Copyright Noah Berger / 2019   Yi Ma (University of California, Berkeley) Title: Deep Networks from First Principles Abstract: In this talk, we offer an entirely “white box’’ interpretation of deep (convolution) networks from the perspective of data compression (and group invariance). In particular, we show how modern deep layered architectures, linear (convolution) operators and […]

Dan Freed (The University of Texas at Austin) Title: The Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem Abstract: The story of the index theorem ties together the Gang of Four—Atiyah, Bott, Hirzebruch, and Singer—and lies at the intersection of analysis, geometry, and topology. In the first part of the talk I will recount high points in the early developments. Then I […]

Amit Sahai  (UCLA) Title: Indistinguishability Obfuscation: How to Hide Secrets within Software Abstract: At least since the initial public proposal of public-key cryptography based on computational hardness conjectures (Diffie and Hellman, 1976), cryptographers have contemplated the possibility of a “one-way compiler” that translates computer programs into “incomprehensible” but equivalent forms. And yet, the search for such a “one-way […]