Mathematics Colloquium

University of Pittsburgh, Academic Year 2012-2013


The Mathematics Department Colloquium meets weekly on Friday from 3:30--4:30 pm in Thackerey Hall, Room 704.
Refreshments are served from 3:00 pm in Room 705.

The colloquium committee consists of: Brent Doiron, Tom Hales, Bill Layton, Marta Lewicka (Chair, lewicka@pitt.edu).



Schedule for Spring 2013


Date Speaker and title
Tuesday, January 8
JOB TALK
lecture at 3pm
refreshments at 2:30pm
Professor Sevak Mkrtchyan , Carnegie Mellon University
Asymptotic representation theory of symmetric groups
Monday, January 14
lecture at 3pm
University Club, Ballroom A
refreshments will follow the lecture
Inaugural Lecture of the Mathematics Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh

Professor Yuval Peres , Microsoft
Laplacian growth and the mystery of the abelian sandpile: A visual tour

This Colloquium is also a part of the 2013 Theme Semester on Game Theory and PDEs
Thursday, January 17
JOB TALK
lecture at 3pm
refreshments at 2:30pm
Professor Hao Xu , Harvard University
Intersection theory and tautological rings of moduli spaces of curves
Friday, January 18
JOB TALK
lecture at 4pm
refreshments at 3:30pm
Professor David Anderson , Institut de Mathematiques de Jussieu, Paris
Equivalent Schubert calculus: positivity, formulas, applications
Tuesday, January 22
JOB TALK
lecture at 3pm
refreshments at 2:30pm
Professor Eugene Gorsky , Stony Brook University
Compactified jacobians, Cherednik algebras and knot homology
January 25 Professor Roman Vershynin , University of Michigan,
Probabilistic reasoning in compressed sensing
February 1 Professor Sijue Wu , University of Michigan,
Some large time behaviors of the water wave motion
February 8 Professor Stuart Hastings , University of Pittsburgh
A Comparison of Classical and Modern Methods for Ordinary Differential Equations
February 15 Professor Chun Liu , Penn State
Energetic Variational Approaches for General Diffusion
February 22 Professor Suncica Canic , University of Houston
Mathematical challenges in blood flow
March 1 Professor Andrew Belmonte , Penn State
Games in Space
March 8 Professor David Terman , Ohio State University
Modeling the neuroprotective role of enhanced astrocyte mitochondrial metabolism during stroke
Friday, March 15, 2pm Professor L. Mahadevan , Harvard University
Memory and intelligence in simple mechanical systems
This Colloquium is also a plenary lecture at the "Advances in Nonlinear Science" conference.
Friday, March 22, 2pm Special Graduate Colloquium
Professor Per Enflo , Kent State University
Invariant Subspaces and Orbits of Operators
March 22
lecture at 4pm
Ballroom B, University Club
Edmund R. Michalik Distinguished Lecture in the Mathematical Sciences
Professor Frank Morgan , Williams College
Soap bubbles, tilings, and other partitioning problems
March 29 Professor Volker Elling , University of Michigan
Self-similar vortex spiral solutions of the 2d incompressible Euler equations
Special presentation
Thursday, April 4, 3pm
Professor Scott Chapman , Sam Houston State University
Editor in Chief of The American Mathematical Monthly
Monthly Past, Monthly Present, and Monthly Future
April 5 Professor Ralph Showalter , Oregon State University
Variational Problems & Mixed Formulations of coupled systems of mechanics and diffusion
April 12 Professor Robert Lipton , Louisiana State University
The Mathematics of Dispersion for Optical Metamaterials
April 19 Professor Ovidiu Costin , Ohio State University
Asymptotics and generalized Borel summability



Schedule for Fall 2012


Date Speaker and title
September 7 Professor Bard Ermentrout , University of Pittsburgh
All the way with Gaston Floquet: A theory for flicker hallucinations
September 14 Professor Brent Doiron , University of Pittsburgh
A random walk in neuroscience
September 21 Professor Reza Pakzad , University of Pittsburgh
Isometric immersions: rigidity, regularity and aspects from nonlinear elasticity
September 28 Professor Huiqiang Jiang , University of Pittsburgh
Free boundary problems arising from materials science
October 5
lecture at 4pm
Ballroom, Rm. 202, O'Hara Student Center
Edmund R. Michalik Distinguished Lecture in the Mathematical Sciences
Professor Shing-Tung Yau , Harvard University
Geometry: from Riemann to Einstein and on to String Theory
October 12 Professor Catalin Trenchea , University of Pittsburgh
Mathematical and Computational Methods for Predictive Simulation of Evolution Systems
October 19 Professor Paul Gartside , University of Pittsburgh
Hilbert's 13th Problem
October 26 Professor Ralph L. Cohen , Stanford University
Loops, Strings, and Topology
November 2 Professor Andrew Belmonte , Penn State
Games in Space
November 9 Professor John Rinzel , Center for Neural Science and Courant Institute, New York University
Dynamics of Perceptual Bistability
Thursday, November 15
lecture at 3pm
refreshments at 2:30pm
Professor George E. Andrews , Penn State
Ramanujan at 125
November 23 Thanksgiving Break
Thursday, November 29
lecture at 3pm
refreshments at 2:30pm
Professor Michel Brion , Universite Grenoble I
Structure of algebraic groups
November 30 Professor Marcus Khuri , Stony Brook University
Quasi-local Mass and the Static Extension Problem in General Relativity
December 7 Professor Charles Doering , University of Michigan
``Ultimate state'' of two-dimensional Rayleigh-Benard convection
December 14 ---





Past colloquia: 2010-2011 . 2009-2010 . 2008-2009 . 2007-2008