Speaker: Moon Duchin (Tufts) Title: Exploring the (massive) space of graph partitions Abstract: The problem of electoral redistricting can be set up as a search of the space of partitions of a graph (representing the units of a state or other jurisdiction) subject to constraints (state and federal rules about the properties of districts). I'll survey the problem and some […]
During Academic year 2018-19, the CMSA will be hosting a Program on Mathematical Biology. Just over a century ago, the biologist, mathematician and philologist D’Arcy Thompson wrote “On growth and form”. The book was a visionary synthesis of the geometric biology of form at the time. It also served as a call for mathematical and physical approaches […]
In Fall 2018, the CMSA will host a Program on Mathematical Biology, which aims to describe recent mathematical advances in using geometry and statistics in a biological context, while also considering a range of physical theories that can predict biological shape at scales ranging from macromolecular assemblies to whole organ systems. The plethora of natural shapes that surround […]
The CMSA will be hosting an F-Theory workshop September 29-30, 2018. The workshop will be held in room G10 of the CMSA, located at 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. Click here for videos of the talks. Organizers: Paolo Aluffi (Florida State) Lara B. Anderson (Virginia Tech) Mboyo Esole (Northeastern) Shing-Tung Yau (Harvard) Speakers: Mirjam Cvetic, University […]
On August 27-28, 2018, the CMSA will be hosting a Kickoff workshop on Topology and Quantum Phases of Matter. New ideas rooted in topology have recently had a big impact on condensed matter physics, and have highlighted new connections with high energy physics, mathematics and quantum information theory. Additionally, these ideas have found applications in the design of […]
The CMSA will host a 3-day workshop on cosmological signatures of fundamental physics. The workshop will be held in room G10 of the CMSA, located at 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. The next decade will see a wealth of new cosmological data, which can lead to new insights for fundamental physics. This upcoming data will span the entire […]
Speaker: Washington Tayor (MIT) Title: On the fibration structure of known Calabi-Yau threefolds Abstract: In recent years, there is increasing evidence from a variety of directions, including the physics of F-theory and new generalized CICY constructions, that a large fraction of known Calabi-Yau manifolds have a genus one or elliptic fibration. In this talk I will describe […]
Speaker: Pablo Parillo (MIT) Title: Graph Structure in Polynomial Systems: Chordal Networks Abstract: The sparsity structure of a system of polynomial equations or an optimization problem can be naturally described by a graph summarizing the interactions among the decision variables. It is natural to wonder whether the structure of this graph might help in computational algebraic geometry […]
The workshop on coding and information theory will take place April 9-13, 2018 at the Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, located at 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. This workshop will focus on new developments in coding and information theory that sit at the intersection of combinatorics and complexity, and will bring together researchers from several communities — […]
The CMSA will be hosting a three-day Simons Collaboration Workshop on Homological Mirror Symmetry and Hodge Theory on April 5-7, 2018. The workshop will be held in room G10 of the CMSA, located at 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. Please click here to register for this event. We have space for up to 30 registrants on a first come, […]
Speaker: Ramesh Narayan, Department of Astronomy, Harvard University Title: Black Holes and Naked Singularities Abstract: Black Hole solutions in General Relativity contain Event Horizons and Singularities. Astrophysicists have discovered two populations of black hole candidates in the Universe: stellar-mass objects with masses in the range 5 to 30 solar masses, and supermassive objects with masses […]
Speaker: Andrea Montanari (Stanford) Title: A Mean Field View of the Landscape of Two-Layers Neural Networks Abstract: Multi-layer neural networks are among the most powerful models in machine learning and yet, the fundamental reasons for this success defy mathematical understanding. Learning a neural network requires to optimize a highly non-convex and high-dimensional objective (risk function), a problem which […]