Meets on (some) Mondays at 3:00 p.m. in Buttrick 305

Organized by:

Kristina, kristina dot dahle at vanderbilt dot edu

Co-organized by:

Denali, denali dot d dot relles at vanderbilt dot edu

Monday November 2nd

Will McDermott

Title: When the waves follow you: the characteristic initial value problem

Abstract: The characteristic initial value problem is an alternative approach to studying the evolution problem for physical systems in which data is prescribed along characteristic curves or hypersurfaces. I will introduce the characteristic initial value problem in the case of the one-dimensional wave equation and connect it with my research on characteristic initial value problems for general quasilinear wave equations.

Monday November 9th

Maria Mihaila

Title and abstract TBA

Monday November 16th

Alberto Magaña

Title and abstract TBA

Monday November 30th

Kate Rybak

Title and abstract TBA

Monday October 19th

Greg Borissov

Learning to Write Letters: Now I Know My \(\alpha\beta\gamma\)’s!

Have you ever struggled to write \(\zeta\)? Are you tired of drawing \(\xi\) as a squiggly line? Does humanity know if it’s pronounced “fee” or “fai”? This talk will walk you through the important but often forgotten part of mathematics communication: notation. We will go over proper penmanship when handwriting mathematics, discuss pronunciation of letters and common phrases/names, and other shortcuts when giving talks. All are welcome!

Tuesday October 13th

Brian Morton

The Miracle of Free Boundary Fluids

Tuesday October 6th, 4:00pm, SC 1431

Colby Shaw

Laminations, Foliations, and Train Tracks: A Crash Course

We will give an introduction to the connections between laminations, foliations, and train tracks on surfaces. We will then briefly discuss how these tools appear in Thurston’s classification of orientation-preserving surface homeomorphisms up to isotopy, and mention some of the many other areas of mathematics in which they arise.

Monday September 21th

Jean-luc Rabideau

Monday September 7th

Denali Relles

Stable Homotopy Theory: Topology and Algebra

Topological spaces are great, but do you ever wish that they were more like abelian groups? I know I do! That's why I study spectra. A spectrum (for me) is an object which can be a topological space that has been "stabilized", but in another sense is an abelian group "up to homotopy". In this talk, I will explain what this means, and why it is useful.