Member Seminar Speaker: Iacopo Brivio, CMSA Title: Lifting F-split surfaces to the Witt vectors Abstract: Algebraic varieties in positive characteristic are ill behaved compared to characteristic zero ones. Several important tools available over the complex numbers, such as the Hodge decomposition theorem, are either not available or straight-away false. There are two important classes of […]
Quantum Field Theory and Physical Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Surya Raghavendran, Yale University Title: Twisted D-branes and TQFTs valued in Calabi-Yau categories Abstract: Recently, Bozec–Calaque–Scherotzke have articulated a noncommutative version of the AKSZ construction, which associates to a smooth Calabi–Yau category a fully extended TQFT valued in a category of iterated Calabi–Yau cospans. In this talk, […]
Colloquium Speaker: Nikita Nekrasov, Simons Center Title: Dynamics as intersection problem Abstract: Most classical and quantum field theories are based on an action principle. However, there are important exceptions to this --- hydrodynamics and the theory of self-dual fields. In this talk we formulate the covariant relativistic fluid dynamics, with or without magnetic fields, as […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Tatsunori Hashimoto, Stanford Title: New directions in synthetic data Abstract: Synthetic data has been an effective, if boring set of techniques: prompt some language model to restructure your corpus to match some downstream task, with occasionally some distillation. In this talk, we will take a more expansive view of […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Keyou Zeng Title: From Poincaré/Koszul duality to (twisted) AdS/CFT correspondence Abstract: Poincaré duality is a fundamental result in the (co)homology theory of manifolds. It has many applications in topology and vast generalizations to other types of “spaces,” such as singular/stratified spaces and schemes. In this talk, I will discuss a variant of Poincaré duality […]
Quantum Field Theory and Physical Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Matthew Yu (University of Oxford) Title: When do anomalous finite symmetries in (3+1)d enforce gaplessness? Abstract: I will explain a comprehensive framework for characterizing the infrared (IR) phases of a fermionic QFTs in (3+1)d, based on their quantum anomalies associated with a finite symmetry. We uncover a […]
Colloquium Speaker: Anuj Srivastava, Johns Hopkins University Title: Statistical Shape Analysis of Complex Natural Structures Abstract: Statistical modeling and analysis of structured data is a fast-growing field in Statistics and Data Science. Rapid advances in imaging techniques have led to tremendous amounts of data for analyzing imaged objects across several scientific disciplines. Examples include shapes […]
Algebra Seminar Speaker: Aryaman Maithani, University of Utah Title: Polynomial invariants of conjugation over finite fields Abstract: Consider the conjugation action of GL₂(K) on the polynomial ring K. When K is an infinite field, the ring of invariants is a polynomial ring generated by the trace and the determinant. We describe the ring of invariants when K is a finite field, and show that it is a hypersurface.
Workshop on Calabi-Yau metrics and optimal transport Dates: May 18–22, 2026 Location: Harvard CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge MA Recent advances in the study of Calabi-Yau metrics have revealed an interesting connection with optimal transport, and the regularity theory for optimal transport is expected to play an increasingly important role in the study of Kähler […]
Quantum Field Theory and Physical Mathematics Seminar
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Pierfrancesco Urbani, Universite Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CEA, Institut de physique theorique Title: Separation of timescales controls feature learning and overfitting in large neural networks Abstract: To understand the inductive bias and generalization capabilities of large, overparameterized machine learning models, it is essential to analyze the dynamics of their training algorithms. […]
Big Data Conference 2026 Dates: Sep. 3–4, 2026 Location: Harvard University CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge & via Zoom The Big Data Conference features speakers from the Harvard community as well as scholars from across the globe, with talks focusing on computer science, statistics, math and physics, and economics. Details TBA