Colloquium

The magnitude is an isometric invariant of metric spaces that was introduced by Tom Leinster in 2010, and is currently the object of intense research, as it has been shown […]

We review a beautiful 17th century result by the philosopher Rene Descartes: a univariate real polynomial with t monomial terms has no more than t-1 positive roots. We then see […]

In 2007, Dr. Maria D'Orsogna learned of proposed oil activities in her home region of Abruzzo, Italy. Century-old wineries were to be uprooted to build clusters of oil wells, refineries […]

A fascinating fact on mathematics is that there are many interesting connections between seemingly different mathematical disciplines. In this talk, I will present a surprising formula counting integral points on […]

Silica-based glasses are increasingly becoming vital components in our current technology, from optical data transmission lines, to electronics, to optical lenses, to smartphone screens. These materials are inherently brittle and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 areas. To get a large swarm to exhibit a desired behavior, one solution is to make each individual in the swarm fairly intelligent; another is […]

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 […]