CSUF Math Department Colloquium

The CSUF Math Department Colloquium features talks from research mathematicians aimed at a wide audience.

 

upcoming talks:

 

  • Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 3:00PM in MH 480.
    Speaker: Paata Ivanisvili (UC Irvine).
    Title: Discrete Approximation Theory.  
    Abstract: I will discuss polynomial approximation problems on the n-dimensional hypercube, focusing on quantitative estimates of the approximation error as n grows. This topic represents a burgeoning area in the analysis of Boolean functions—one that is far less understood than its classical counterpart on the real line. I will present several recent results together with its applications, as well as highlight ongoing challenges and open problems in the field

 

Past talks:

  • Date: Friday, October 18, 2024 at 12:00PM in MH 390.
    Speaker: Mike Wong (U Ottawa).
    Title: Knots, Surfaces, Spaces, and Spacetimes.  
    Abstract: Low-dimensional topology is the study of spaces in dimension 0 to 4. For example, it includes knot theory, the study of 1-dimensional knots in 3-dimensional spaces. The modern study of knots began with Lord Kelvin’s vortex theory, which posited that atoms were knots in the luminiferous aether; after vortex theory was abandoned, knot theory became more of an esoteric subject in pure mathematics for almost a century. In a wonderful twist of history, however, the last few decades have seen the advent of both theoretical connections with and applications to biochemistry – via DNA topology – and physics – via topological quantum field theories (TQFTs). These connections, in turn, have led to new methods to study low-dimensional topology. For instance, TQFTs associate algebraic structures not only to knots and spaces, but also to their trajectories as they evolve; with the time dimension added, these trajectories are 2-dimensional surfaces in 4-dimensional spacetimes. These algebraic structures themselves enjoy beautiful structures that are of great mathematical interest. In this talk, we will explore how these various ideas fit together, with a view towards both the topological spaces and the modern tools that we use to study them.

  • Title: A. Einstein, J. Bell: some history, some math, some experimental work and some technical developments in the 21st century.  An introduction.  
    Abstract:   The profound questions of Albert Einstein about quantum mechanics, some of them formulated in his famous 1935 paper EPR, and put much later into mathematical form by the Irish physicist John Bell have given rise to repeated and more sophisticated experiments.  The first one was performed in Berkeley in 1971.  Many developments in the area of quantum computing and quantum communications are the results of efforts to deal with Einstein's questions.  This talk is intended for a non-expert audience.
    About the speaker:  F. Alberto Grünbaum is an applied mathematician and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.  His research papers explore many different topics, from orthogonal polynomials and special functions, time and band-limiting in signal processing, computerized tomography, integrable systems, and quantum random walks.He has served as Chair in the Math Department at Berkeley and as chief editor of the journal Inverse Problems, a publication of the Institute of Physics in the UK.
    Date: Monday, January 30 at 2:30 PM

  • Spaces of stochastic distributions and models for stochastic processes.  A white noise space approach. (Dr. Daniel Alpay, Chapman University) - December 3, 2021

  • Orderly formations and traveling waves exhibited by schooling winngs.  (Dr. Anand Oza, New Jersey Institute of Technology) - November 12, 2021