UNAIDS has proposed an ambitious strategy for ending the HIV pandemic. Their strategy depends upon achieving a treatment coverage goal of 90% by 2030. However, distance to healthcare and lack of transportation are major barriers to accessing HIV treatment in SSA. I will use data-based geospatial modeling to determine their potential impact as barriers to […]
In today's environment of universal connection and media updates, we are constantly informed about infectious diseases and the ramifications. We can combat infectious diseases using mathematics to gain insight into diseases dynamics and outbreaks. I will focus primarily on Ebola Virus Disease, exploring different models focused on capturing various dynamics. First, I will present a […]
The Field Committee Meeting is our chance to socialize with our colleagues and coordinate our course offerings for the coming academic year (2020-2021). Please come to discuss course offerings and […]
In general terms, a Tauberian theorem deals with the relationship between the properties of one transform of a measure with those of another transform. We will introduce the notion of a Tauberian theorm, and present our own recent theorem in this direction. Our theorem provides a uniform theory for the construction of certain localized kernels […]
In this talk, we'll discuss the problem of constructing meaningful distances between probability distributions given only finite samples from each distribution. We approach this through the use of data-adaptive and localized kernels, and in a variety of contexts. First, we construct locally adaptive kernels to define fast pairwise distances between distributions, with applications to unsupervised […]
What do swarm robotics and political redistricting have in common? One answer is Markov chains, which have recently been used in very different ways to address problems in both these […]
Knotting in living organisms is a feature that is visible to the careful observer of biological life. Since the 1970’s, with the increasing power of electron microscopes, scientists have been able to capture images of such structures in living organisms at near atomic levels. We will explore the mathematics of knotting that has provided tools study these […]
Many problems, arising in discrete and metric geometry, signal processing, physics, etc, can be reformulated as questions of optimizing discrete or continuous measures. We shall review some of such conjectures, as well as approaches to determining optimal (or at least good) point distributions and measures, and connections to other problems, such as discrepancy, sphere packings […]
Opioid addiction has become a national health crisis in recent years, with involvement in 66% of all drug overdose deaths in 2016 and high economic costs. In contrast to the dynamics of a classic disease or illicit drug epidemic, opioid addiction has its roots in legal, prescription medication - a fact which greatly increases the […]
In 1897, Indiana physician Edwin J. Goodwin believed he had discovered a way to square the circle, and proposed a bill to Indiana Representative Taylor I. Record which would secure Indiana’s the claim to fame for his discovery. About the time the debate about the bill concluded, Purdue University professor Clarence A. Waldo serendipitously came […]
David Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geometrie is a rare example of a historical mathematics text that is still profitably read today and continues to inspire research in mathematics, computer science, and philosophy. The effort of publishing an English translation of Hilbert in 1902 involved a diverse swath of the American mathematical community. Edgar Jerome Townsend completed a first draft […]
