During the 2024–25 academic year, the CMSA will be hosting a Member Seminar, organized by Iacopo Brivio and Tomer Ezra.

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.

Event Series Member Seminar

Phase diagram and confining strings in a minimal model of nematopolar matter

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

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 […]

Event Series Member Seminar

Global weak solutions of 3+1 dimensional vacuum Einstein equations 

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Puskar Mondal Title: Global weak solutions of 3+1 dimensional vacuum Einstein equations Abstract: It is important to understand if the `solutions' of non-linear evolutionary PDEs persist for all time or become extinct in finite time through the blow-up of invariant entities. Now the question of this global existence or finite time […]

Event Series Member Seminar

Member Seminar

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Sunghyuk Park, Harvard CMSA Title: 3D quantum trace map Abstract: I will speak about my recent work (joint with Sam Panitch) constructing the 3d quantum trace map, a homomorphism from the Kauffman bracket skein module of an ideally triangulated 3-manifold to its (square root) quantum gluing module, thereby giving a precise relationship […]

Event Series Member Seminar

On using ML for Economics

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Sergiy Verstyuk Title: On using ML for Economics Abstract: I will introduce some tools from the field of machine learning and discuss how they can be leveraged to get a fresh perspective on economics.

Event Series Member Seminar

On the landscape of 4d N=2 SCFTs

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Robert Moscrop, Harvard CMSA Title: On the landscape of 4d N=2 SCFTs Abstract: Four-dimensional conformal field theories with sufficient (N = 2) supersymmetry are highly constrained. So much so, there has been an ongoing effort to classify them using only information about their moduli space of vacua. In this talk, I will review […]

Event Series Member Seminar

Quasilocal mass for general domains in space

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Jue Liu Title: Quasilocal mass for general domains in space Abstract: Diffeomorphism-invariant quasilocal mass in classical general relativity has been studied for decades, but it is still an open problem how to define quasi-local mass for general domains with multiple boundaries in space. Using the Hamiltonian formulation, we will provide a new way […]

Abundance for mixed characteristic threefolds

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Member Seminar Speaker: Iacopo Brivio (CMSA) Title: Abundance for mixed characteristic threefolds Abstract: The Minimal Model Program (MMP) predicts that every algebraic variety X is birational to either a fibration in Fano varieties, or it admits a “minimal model” X', that is a birational model with nef canonical bundle K_X'. The Abundance conjecture predicts then […]

Communication Complexity of Combinatorial Auctions

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Member Seminar Speaker: Tomer Ezra (CMSA) Title: Communication Complexity of Combinatorial Auctions Abstract: We study the communication complexity of welfare maximization in combinatorial auctions with m items and two subadditive bidders. A 2-approximation can be guaranteed by a trivial randomized protocol with zero communication, or a trivial deterministic protocol with O(1) communication. We show that […]

High-dimensional learning of narrow neural networks

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Member Seminar Speaker: Hugo Cui, CMSA Title: High-dimensional learning of narrow neural networks Abstract: This talk explores the interplay between neural network architectures and data structure through the lens of high-dimensional asymptotics. We focus on a class of narrow neural networks, namely networks possessing a finite number of hidden units, while operating in high dimensions. In the […]

Scattering Amplitude from a Twistor Point of View

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Member Seminar Speaker: Keyou Zeng Title: Scattering Amplitude from a Twistor Point of View Abstract: Scattering amplitude is a key quantity in quantum field theory. Although challenging to compute at higher loops and for large particle numbers, physicists have developed various tools to gain a deeper understanding of amplitudes. In this seminar, I will introduce […]

Positive mass and rigidity theorems in Riemannian geometry  

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Member Seminar Speaker: Puskar Mondal Title: Positive mass and rigidity theorems in Riemannian geometry Abstract: Positive mass theorem proved by Schoen-Yau, Witten, Taubes-Parker is one of the most important results in scalar curvature geometry in asymptotically flat settings. Since then several versions have been proven and generalized to other geometries such as asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds. The analogous […]