• CMSA Math-Science Literature Lecture: Hodge structures and the topology of algebraic varieties

    Virtual

    Claire Voisin (Collège de France) Title: Hodge structures and the topology of algebraic varieties Abstract: We review the major progress made since the 50’s in our understanding of the topology of complex algebraic varieties. Most of the results  we will discuss  rely on Hodge theory, which  has some analytic aspects giving the Hodge and Lefschetz decompositions, and […]

  • Self-induced regularization from linear regression to neural networks

    Virtual

    https://youtu.be/bjRqmlI_SFs Speaker: Andrea Montanari, Departments of Electrical Engineering and Statistics, Stanford Title: Self-induced regularization from linear regression to neural networks Abstract: Modern machine learning methods --most noticeably multi-layer neural networks-- require to fit highly non-linear models comprising tens of thousands to millions of parameters. Despite this, little attention is paid to the regularization mechanism to […]

  • CMSA Math-Science Literature Lecture: Area-minimizing integral currents and their regularity

    Virtual

    Camillo De Lellis (IAS) Title: Area-minimizing integral currents and their regularity Abstract: Caccioppoli sets and integral currents (their generalization in higher codimension) were introduced in the late fifties and early sixties to give a general geometric approach to the existence of area-minimizing oriented surfaces spanning a given contour. These concepts started a whole new subject which has […]

  • CMSA Math-Science Literature Lecture: From Deep Learning to Deep Understanding

    Virtual

    Harry Shum (Tsinghua University) Title: From Deep Learning to Deep Understanding Abstract: In this talk I will discuss a couple of research directions for robust AI beyond deep neural networks. The first is the need to understand what we are learning, by shifting the focus from targeting effects to understanding causes. The second is the need for a […]

  • CMSA Math-Science Literature Lecture: A personal story of the 4D Poincare conjecture

    Virtual

    Michael Freedman (Microsoft – Station Q) Title: A personal story of the 4D Poincare conjecture Abstract:  The proof of PC4 involved the convergence of several historical streams.  To get started: high dimensional manifold topology (Smale), a new idea on how to study 4-manifolds (Casson), wild “Texas” topology (Bing). Once inside the proof: there are three submodules: […]

  • CMSA Math-Science Literature Lecture: Immersions of manifolds and homotopy theory

    Virtual

    Ralph Cohen (Stanford University) Title: Immersions of manifolds and homotopy theory Abstract: The interface between the study of the topology of differentiable manifolds and algebraic topology has been one of the richest areas of work in topology since the 1950’s. In this talk I will focus on one aspect of that interface: the problem of studying embeddings […]