Freedman Seminar Speaker: Michael Freedman, Harvard CMSA Title: Sullivan’s work on Lipschitz structures Part II (but self-contained) Speaker: Bowen Yang, CMSA Title: Deligne and Sullivan's work on complex bundles with discrete structure group
Conference on Geometry and Statistics Dates: November 17–19, 2025 Location: CMSA G10, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge MA & via Zoom Speakers Charles Fefferman, Princeton University Stephan Huckemann, Georg-August Universität Göttingen Sungkyu Jung, Seoul National University Kei Kobayashi, Keio University Clément Levrard, Université de Rennes Ker-Chau Li, University of California, Los Angeles Rong Ma, Harvard […]
Quantum Field Theory and Physical Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Justin Kulp, Stony Brook Title: BV and the ThimTFT Abstract: The SymTFT (or “quiche”) construction relates different global forms of d-dimensional QFTs with discrete symmetry: realizing different global forms as a (d+1)-dimensional TFT on an interval, with a common "physical" boundary condition on one side, and different […]
Colloquium Speaker: Zhigang Yao (National University of Singapore) Title: Interaction of Statistics and Geometry: A New Landscape for Data Science Abstract: Classical statistics views data as real numbers or vectors in Euclidean space, but modern challenges increasingly involve data with intrinsic geometric structures. A central problem in this direction is manifold fitting, with origins in H. Whitney’s […]
Algebra Seminar Speaker: Dawei Chen, Boston College Title: Differentials and Singularities Abstract: Given a holomorphic differential on a smooth algebraic curve, we associate to it a Gorenstein curve singularity with Gm-action. Conversely, we show that every isolated Gorenstein curve singularity with Gm-action appears in this way. This construction reveals a fascinating relation between differentials and […]
Differential Geometry and Physics Seminar Speaker: Andrés Franco Valiente, UC Berkeley Title: Tropical-Topological (Tropological) Sigma Models Abstract: Tropical geometry provides a powerful bridge between complex and combinatorial worlds, allowing certain curve-counting invariants to be computed in a piecewise-linear “tropical” limit. Building on Mikhalkin’s insight that Gromov–Witten invariants can be recovered from tropical curves, this talk revisits Mikhalkin's […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Francesco Mori, CMSA Title: Optimal learning protocols via statistical physics and control theory Abstract: Behind the impressive performance of modern machine learning lies a toolkit of training tricks, from tuning learning rates to curating training data. These heuristics are powerful but hard to interpret and possibly suboptimal, leaving open the challenge of finding general […]
Colloquium Speaker: Thomas Grimm, Utrecht University Title: Geometric Simplicity in Quantum Field Theory and Gravity Abstract: In physics we attribute much value to the emergence of simplicity, both conceptually and for computations. Familiar examples include algebraic relations among Feynman amplitudes, the surprising descriptions arising in large-N or duality limits, and the central role played by […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker:Vasily Krylov, CMSA Title: Coulomb branches and KLRW algebras Abstract: I will introduce Coulomb branches associated to a pair of a reductive group G and its complex representation N. We will discuss their main geometric properties and examine explicit examples. I will also highlight the connection to the moduli space of monopoles. […]
Colloquium Speaker: Yue M. Lu, Harvard University Title: Asymptotic Theory of Attention: In-Context Learning and Sparse Token Detection Abstract: Attention-based architectures exhibit striking emergent abilities—from learning tasks directly from context to detecting rare, weak features in long sequences—yet a rigorous theory explaining these behaviors remains limited. In this talk, I will present two recent exactly solvable models that […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: Sebastian Haney, Harvard Title: Homological mirror symmetry for Coulomb branches Abstract: I will describe a result of Aganagic, Danilenko, Li, Shende, and Zhou which constructs a embeddings of certain cylindrical KLRW categories into Fukaya-Seidel categories of multiplicative Coulomb branches. This can be thought of as a homological mirror symmetry statement relating the […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Adam Zsolt Wagner, Google DeepMind Title: Machine learning tools for mathematical discovery Abstract: I will discuss various ML tools we can use today to try to find interesting constructions to various mathematical problems. I will briefly mention simple reinforcement learning setups and PatternBoost, but the talk will mainly focus […]