Northeast Conference on Categorical Methods Dates: November 6–7, 2026 Location: CMSA G10, 20 Garden St., Cambridge MA 02138 This conference is intended to bring together researchers in all areas of mathematics and mathematical physics whose work involves the use of methods from categorical algebra, abstract homotopy theory, and higher category theory. Our goal is to […]
Geometry and Mathematical Physics Seminar Speaker: Ron Donagi, University of Pennsylvania Title: Recent developments in super geometry Abstract: String theory leads naturally to consideration of Super Riemann surfaces and their super moduli spaces. Much of the classical theory of curves and their moduli, e.g. existence of a Deligne-Mumford compactification, has natural super-analogues. But a number […]
AI for the Working Mathematician Speaker: Andrew Sutherland, MIT Title: Doing mathematics with AI agents: A case study Abstract: I will describe a project with four human collaborators and a varying cast of AI agents that ran from summer 2025 to summer 2026, what we learned about working with AI agents in the process, and what I have learned since […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Bowen Yang Title: Poincaré Duality in Quantum Error-Correcting Codes Abstract: Quantum information is fragile, and one of the main tools for protecting it is a family of error-correcting codes called stabilizer codes. These codes have a second life as exactly solvable models of quantum matter: the code space is the vacuum state […]
Geometry and Mathematical Physics Seminar Speaker: Elliott Gesteau (MIT & CMSA) Title: Worldsheets, baby universes, and asymptotic representation theory Abstract: The string worldsheet can be reinterpreted as a baby universe field theory, a formalism first introduced by Coleman, Giddings and Strominger and more recently revived by Marolf and Maxfield to deal with third quantization in […]
AI for the Working Mathematician Speaker: Tristan Buckmaster, NYU Title: A 'Deep Blue-Kasparov moment for mathematics' Abstract: In this talk I will describe recent work with Levent Alpöge proving the blow-up for smooth solutions to the incompressible Euler equations and the broader implications that such results have of the study of mathematics.
Colloquium Speaker: Anar Akhmedov, University of Minnesota Title: The Geography of Symplectic 4-Manifolds Abstract: The symplectic geography problem, originally posed by J. McCarthy-J. Wolfson and R. Gompf, asks which ordered pairs of nonnegative integers are realized as (\chi(X),c_1^2(X)) for a symplectic 4-manifold X, where \chi(X)=(e(X)+\sigma(X))/4. In this talk, we will address the geography of simply […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Riccardo Zecchina (Bocconi University) Title: Local learning needs dendrites Abstract: I will present a learning scheme for recurrent networks in which nonlinear dendrites enable learning by generating and stabilizing task-relevant attractors within a representation manifold. The scheme is local in space and time and matches the performance of backpropagation […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Yiqi Liu Title: An Introduction to Statistical Inference for Partially Identified Models Abstract: Classical statistical inference often relies on asymptotic approximations that are valid for each fixed data-generating process but may fail to hold uniformly over a class of relevant distributions. Starting with the familiar t-test, I will illustrate why this distinction […]
Geometry and Mathematical Physics Seminar Speaker: Spiro Karigiannis, University of Waterloo Title: A tale of two Lie groups Abstract: The classical Lie group SO(4) is well-known to possess a very rich structure, relating in several ways to complex Euclidean spaces. This structure can be used to construct the classical twistor space Z over an oriented […]
AI for the Working Mathematician Speaker: Lauren Williams, Harvard Title: First Proof Batch 3: Mathematicians putting AI to the test Abstract: First Proof is an initiative that aims to obtain a nuanced, objective assessment about the capabilities of large language models to prove specified mathematical statements. I will report on the results of First Proof's third […]
AI for the Working Mathematician Speaker: Jordan Ellenberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison Title: Large Hypercubes Abstract: I'll talk about this paper: Bruhat intervals that are large hypercubes <arxiv.org/abs/2601.01235> in which we use a tool from Google, AlphaEvolve, to discover unexpected combinatorial structures inside the symmetric group (to be precise, a large hypercube in the Bruhat order.) I'll […]