Freedman Seminar Speaker: Michael Freedman, Harvard CMSA Title: The geometry of the Bing Involution Abstract: I’ll discuss a new sharper proof, joint with Mike Starbird that precisely quantifies the stretching necessary for Bing’s wild involution on S^3.
CMSA/Tsinghua Math-Science Literature Lecture Date: Thursday, October 29, 2026 Time: 9:00 - 10:30 am ET Location: online via Zoom Webinar Please register to attend. Zoom Webinar registration Speaker: Peng Shan, Tsinghua University Title: Bridging affine vertex algebras and affine Springer fibres Abstract: In this talk, I would like to explain a program which […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Xinjie He, UCLA Title: The IEANTN Project: Automation and Mathematical Understanding Abstract: Explicit analytic number theory combines conceptual arguments with extensive bookkeeping and numerical computation, often drawing on long chains of results across many papers. The Integrated Explicit Analytic Number Theory Network (IEANTN) aims to organize this literature into […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Tianyi Peng, Decision, Risk, and Operations Division, Columbia Business School Title: Prove2Me: Formalizing Fermat Last Theorem and Beyond Abstract: Proof assistants such as Lean 4 promise the paradigm of formally verified mathematics, but large-scale formalization projects have faced major barriers to entry, including the need for expertise in formal verification […]
Freedman Seminar Speaker: Slava Krushkal (University of Virginia) Title: 4-manifold topology and collision rank of groups Abstract: I will introduce collision rank and show that groups of finite collision rank are good in the sense of topological 4-manifold theory. Finitely generated groups of collision rank two are shown to exist outside the class of subexponentially […]
https://youtu.be/pAlKAFC5u64 First Proof, Second Batch: Results Date: June 10, 2026 Time: 1:00–2:00 pm ET Location: via Webinar The First Proof Editors present the results of their Second Batch benchmark testing on AI systems. First Proof Editors Mohammed Abouzaid (Stanford) Nikhil Srivastava (UC Berkeley) Rachel Ward (UT Austin) Lauren Williams (Harvard)
https://youtu.be/fNrR4lTiScQ Introduction to First Proof: A conversation Date: June 3, 2026 Time: 1:00–2:00 pm Location: via Webinar Harvard CMSA Director Dan Freed will lead a dialogue with First Proof Editors Mohammed Abouzaid (Stanford), Nikhil Srivastava (UC Berkeley), Rachel Ward (UT Austin), and Lauren Williams (Harvard) to explore the origins and goals of First Proof, sample […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Pierfrancesco Urbani, Universite Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CEA, Institut de physique theorique Title: Separation of timescales controls feature learning and overfitting in large neural networks Abstract: To understand the inductive bias and generalization capabilities of large, overparameterized machine learning models, it is essential to analyze the dynamics of their training algorithms. […]
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Tatsunori Hashimoto, Stanford Title: New directions in synthetic data Abstract: Synthetic data has been an effective, if boring set of techniques: prompt some language model to restructure your corpus to match some downstream task, with occasionally some distillation. In this talk, we will take a more expansive view of […]
Freedman Seminar Speaker: Mike Freedman, Harvard CMSA Title: Compression Is All You Need: Modeling Mathematics Abstract: The talk will exposit a recent eponymous arXiv posting with coauthors Vitaly Aksenov, Eve Bodnia, and Mike Mulligan. The approach is to think like a physicist and model a seemingly complex bit of reality: mathematics, by a simple toy […]
Freedman Seminar Speaker: Robert Gompf, UT Austin Title: Exotic R^4's are unclassifiable Abstract: We will use descriptive set theory to show that there is a precise sense in which exotic R^4's are unclassifiable. For other open manifolds, we can reach a much higher level of unclassifiability. This is work in progress with Aristotelis Panagiotopoulos.
New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Emmanuel Abbé, EPFL, Institute of Mathematics and School of Computer and Communication Sciences & Apple Title: Dynamic reasoning Abstract: In the current AI landscape, reasoning is frequently equated with the generation of intermediate "thinking traces". However, these traces are merely a mechanism, not the ultimate objective. Relying solely on the presence of […]