Speaker: Dusa McDuff (Columbia University) Title: The virtual fundamental class in symplectic geometry Abstract: Essential to many constructions and applications of symplectic geometry is the ability to count J-holomorphic curves. The moduli spaces of such curves have well understood compactifications, and if cut out transversally are oriented manifolds of dimension equal to the index of the problem, so […]
Current Developments in Mathematics 2018 Conference. Friday, Nov. 16, 2018 2:15 pm – 6:00 pm Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Harvard University Science Center, Hall B Youtube Playlist
Speaker: Xiaoqin Wang (Johns Hopkins University) Title: Computational Principles of Auditory Cortex Abstract: Auditory cortex is located at the top of a hierarchical processing pathway in the brain that encodes acoustic information. This brain region is crucial for speech and music perception and vocal production. Auditory cortex has long been considered a difficult brain region to study and remained one of less […]
Speaker: Robert Haslhofer (University of Toronto) Title: Recent progress on mean curvature flow Abstract: A family of surfaces moves by mean curvature flow if the velocity at each point is given by the mean curvature vector. Mean curvature flow is the most natural evolution in extrinsic geometry and shares many features with Hamilton’s Ricci flow from intrinsic geometry. In the […]
Just over a century ago, the biologist, mathematician and philologist D’Arcy Thompson wrote “On growth and form”. The book – a literary masterpiece – is a visionary synthesis of the geometric biology of form. It also served as a call for mathematical and physical approaches to understanding the evolution and development of shape. In the […]