Title: Topological descriptions of protein folding Speaker: Prof. Helen Wong, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Claremont-McKenna College. Abstract: Knotting in proteins was once considered exceedingly rare. However, systematic analyses of solved protein structures over the last two decades have demonstrated the existence of many deeply knotted proteins, and researchers now hypothesize that the knotting presents some […]
Title: Understanding Complex Social Systems using Minimal Mathematical Models Abstract: Minimal mathematical models are used to understand complex phenomena in the physical, biological, and social sciences. This modeling philosophy never claims, nor even attempts, to fully capture the mechanisms underlying the phenomena, and instead offers insights and predictions not otherwise possible. Here, we explore minimal […]
Hassett spaces in genus 0 are moduli spaces of weighted pointed stable rational curves; they are important in the minimal model program and enumerative geometry. We compute the Chow ring of heavy/light Hassett spaces. The computation involves intersection theory on the toric variety corresponding to a graphic matroid, and rests upon the work of Cavalieri-Hampe-Markwig-Ranganathan. […]
Title: Projections on Banach spaces and a lifting property of operators Prof. Maria Fernanda Botelho Department of Mathematical Sciences The University Of Memphis Abstract: In this talk I will present properties of contractive projections and explain their role in the existence of norm preserving lifts of operators. A pair of Banach spaces (X, J), with […]
Title: Collective motion in the mitotic spindle Abstract: Math models of interacting individuals moving as a collective have been profoundly successful in describing physical and social phenomena ranging from swarming insects to human crowds. Especially in molecular biology, recent advances in machine-learning-based automated tracking have led to droves of new data of collective motion. I’ll discuss two […]
We will discuss the sparsity of the solutions to systems of linear Diophantine equations with and without non-negativity constraints. The sparsity of a solution vector is the number of its nonzero entries, which is referred to as the 0-norm of the vector. Our main results are new improved bounds on the minimal 0-norm of solutions […]
Title: Collective Behavior in Locust Swarms from Data to Differential Equations Prof. Jasper Weinburd Department of Mathematics Harvey Mudd College Abstract: Locusts are devastating pests that infest and destroy crops. Locusts forage and migrate in large swarms which exhibit distinctive shapes that improve efficiency on the group level, a phenomenon known as collective […]
No applied math talk
Title: TBA Abstract: TBA
In this talk we discuss some problems related to finding large induced subgraphs of a given graph G which satisfy some degree-constraints (for example, all degrees are odd, or all degrees are j mod k, etc). We survey some classical results, present some interesting and challenging problems, and sketch solutions to some of them. This […]
Title: A tribute to Professor Ellis Cumberbatch (1934-2021) Abstract: The math colloquium on December 1st will be devoted to remembrances of our beloved CGU colleague Professor Ellis Cumberbatch, a pillar of the Claremont mathematics community, who passed away in September. Three brief talks by his friends and collaborators, Professor John Ockendon (University of Oxford), Dr. […]
Let d >= 2 be a natural number. We determine the minimum possible size of the difference set A-A in terms of |A| for any sufficiently large finite subset A of R^d that is not contained in a translate of a hyperplane. By a construction of Stanchescu, this is best possible and thus resolves an […]
