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 Activities

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Video Clips of Public Lectures

Mathematics and the Financial Crisis
Paul Embrechts, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich
Monday, 16 Nov 2009
About the Speaker Paul Embrechts is Professor of Mathematics at the ETH Zurich specialising in actuarial mathematics and quantitative risk management. Previous academic positions include the Universities of Leuven, Limburg and London (Imperial College). Dr. Embrechts has held visiting professorships at the University of Strasbourg, ESSEC Paris, the Scuola Normale in Pisa (Cattedra Galileiana), the London School of Economics (Centennial Professor of Finance), the University of Vienna, Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), and has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Waterloo. He is an Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Actuary-SAA, Honorary Fellow of the Institute and the Faculty of Actuaries, Corresponding Member of the Italian Institute of Actuaries and is on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals. He belongs to various national and international research and academic advisory committees. He co-authored the influential books "Modelling of Extremal Events for Insurance and Finance", Springer, 1997 and "Quantitative Risk Management: Concepts, Techniques and Tools", Princeton UP, 2005. Dr. Embrechts consults on issues in quantitative risk management for financial institutions, insurance companies and international regulatory authorities.
Abstract In various articles in the popular press, mathematics is (partly) being blamed for the current financial crisis. In this talk, I will review some of these allegations, and try to put them into the right perspective. No doubt, (financial) mathematics has contributed substantially to a better methodological understanding of the fundamentals of modern finance. The critical question however we have to pose ourselves is whether in the process we have lost (too much) sight of the real world outside. Mathematics was definitely used (abused) for putting scientific respectability on products and prices which lacked sound macro-economic principles. I will definitely answer the question: "Why did nobody warn?" It is to be hoped that consequences will be drawn with respect to teaching and research, but this not only in (financial) mathematics.
Keeping Afloat in a Deluge of DNA Data
Terry Speed, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Tuesday, 22 Sep 2009
About the Speaker Professor Terry Speed is world-renowned for his numerous and important contributions to the applications of statistics to genetics and molecular biology, in particular, to biomolecular sequence analysis, the mapping of genes in experimental crosses and human pedigrees, and the analysis of gene expression data. As a member of the NIH Genome Study Section from 1995 to 1998, he investigated fundamental problems arising from the Human Genome Project. His current research focus is on cancer genomics. For his many contributions, he has received numerous honors from the world's leading scientific bodies, including the NHMRC Achievement Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research (2007), the Moyal Medal (2003), the Pitman Medal (2002), fellowship of the Australian Academy of Sciences (2001), and fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990). Professor Speed has served, and continues to serve on a number of scientific advisory boards and editorial boards in biology, statistics and mathematics. He was also the President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2003-2004 and of the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society in 1994-1995. He has held teaching appointments at universities in Sheffield (UK), Perth (Australia), and Berkeley (USA), and has been a research manager in Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. He is currently the head of the Bioinformatics Division of the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia.
Abstract There have been many advances in science and technology since Watson and Crick's 1953 publication of the structure of DNA, with several leading to novel ways of generating DNA data. In this talk, I'll outline the growth of technologies producing large amounts of DNA data, and talk about the corresponding efforts to store, display, analyze and interpret these data (called bioinformatics). My primary focus will be on DNA sequence data, but I'll also discuss genotyping and gene expression data. Technological themes include multiplexing, miniaturization and Moore's Law, while computational themes include algorithmic time and space requirements, and quick and dirty vs. slow and careful, and creative visualization. The underlying psychological theme is working harder and running faster to stay in the same place in some dimensions, at the same time as advancing dramatically in others.
Roles of Differential Equations in Mathematics and Sciences
Fanghua Lin, Courant Institute, New York University, USA
Tuesday, 11 Aug 2009
About the Speaker Professor Fanghua Lin is the Silver Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. He is a world leader in applied and pure mathematics. His research interests include analysis, partial differential equations and geometric analysis, among others. Professor Lin obtained his PhD from University of Minnesota in 1985 and was promoted to full professor in 1989 at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York University. He has published over 150 papers, supervised 11 PhD students and 20 postdocs. His honors include a Sloan Fellowship in 1989, a Presidential Young Investigator award (1989-1994), the Changjiang Professorship at Zhejiang University in 1999, the AMS Bocher Prize in 2002, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and the S.S. Chern Prize at the ICCM in 2004. Professor Lin was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematics in 1990, an invited speaker at the AMS National Meeting in 2002 and Plenary speaker at the ICCM 2004 and 2007. He is currently on the editorial board of over 10 journals including Comm. Pure. Appl. Math., SIAM J. Math. Anal., J. Diff. Geometry and Math. Res. Letters.
Abstract We shall describe some fundamental roles played by the theories of differential equations in both pure mathematics and applied sciences. By examining past themes and the current developments, the goal of the lecture is to illustrate some philosophical views as well as some new scientific directions and challenges. It is a talk intended for an audience having no specialized knowledge in mathematics.
Mathematics in the Public Eye - The Story of Perelman and the Poincaré Conjecture
Sir John Ball, University of Oxford, UK
Wednesday, 22 Jul 2009
About the Speaker Sir John Ball is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Fellow of The Queen's College, and also honorary Professor at Heriot-Watt University. For his wide-ranging work in applied mathematics and contributions to the scientific community, he has won numerous prizes and honours. These include election as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1980), Fellow of the Royal Society (1989), an Associé Etranger of the Académie des Sciences (2000), foreign member of the Instituto Lombardo (2005), foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (2007), honorary member of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (2008) and member of the Academia Europaea (2008). Other awards include the 1981 Whittaker Prize of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, honorary doctorates from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Montpellier II, and the University of Sussex; the 1990 Keith Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the 1995 Naylor Prize in Applied Mathematics of the London Mathematical Society, the 1999 Theodore Von Karman Prize of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the 2003 David Crighton Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the London Mathematical Society, and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2006). He was conferred the knighthood in 2006. He has served on numerous UK and international boards and advisory committees, including Council Member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council from 1994–1999, President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society from 1989–90, and of the London Mathematical Society from 1996–1998. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee and Past-President of International Mathematical Union (IMU), Chair of the IMU Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC), member of the Board of Governors and Scientific and Academic Advisory Committee, Weizmann Institute, Israel, Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee (and Member of Management Committee, National Advisory Board) of the Isaac Newton Institute, member of the EPSRC College and Trustee of MARM (Mentoring African Research in Mathematics project). It was during his term as president of the IMU that the unusual events that will be described in the talk took place.
Abstract In August 2006 the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman refused to accept the Fields Medal awarded to him by the International Mathematical Union at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. He had been awarded the Medal, regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize, because of his ground-breaking work on the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous open problems of mathematics. The lecture will describe the conjecture, the unusual events surrounding its proof, and how this unfolding story of mathematics and personalities attracted unprecedented worldwide media attention
Rattleback Reversals: a Prototype of Chiral Dynamics
Keith Moffatt, University of Cambridge, UK
Tuesday, 28 Apr 2009
About the Speaker Keith Moffatt is Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His speciality is fluid mechanics and its applications in astrophysics and geophysics, particularly the dynamo theory of generation of planetary and stellar magnetic fields. He is interested in all aspects of theoretical mechanics, and is a past President of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM). Keith served as Director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences from 1996 to 2001. Since then, he has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of IMS (NUS), and on the Councils of CISM (Centre Internationale des Sciences Mécaniques, Italy) and of AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cape Town). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, a foreign member of the Academies of France, Italy, Netherlands and of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He also holds honorary doctorates from a number of Universities, including his Alma Mater, Edinburgh University. He has been awarded many prizes including the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, the Euromech Prize for fluid dynamics, and the Senior Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society.
Abstract The rattleback is a toy that exhibits a curious and surprising dynamical property: when spun in one direction, it spins quite smoothly before gently coming to rest. When spun in the opposite direction, it reacts violently, and rapidly reverses direction. It will be shown that this is a consequence of its 'chirality', i.e. its lack of mirror symmetry. Chirality is endemic in nature: for example turbulence in rotating fluid systems is chiral in character, and it is this property that is responsible for the spontaneous generation of magnetic fields in stars and planets. The nature of this fundamental process will be described.
The Scientific Basis of Climate Change
Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey, UK
Thursday, 23 Apr 2009
About the Speaker Dr Emily Shuckburgh is a UK Natural Environment Research Council fellow based at the British Antarctic Survey and a Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge. She is a climate science expert who has worked at École Normal Supérieure in Paris and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as at the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Dr Shuckburgh's research aims to improve our understanding of the physics of the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans. She has recently spent time taking climate measurements in Antarctica. Dr Shuckburgh is editor of a book published by Cambridge University Press in 2008 entitled ‘Survival: The Survival of the Human Race’, which considers many of the challenges to human survival, now and in the past, including the threat to human societies posed by climate change.
Abstract There is much discussion of the dangers of climate change, but what is the scientific basis for the predictions? This talk will review the science behind the headlines. Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. Data on past climate indicates that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 metres of sea level rise. The scientific community now believes that it is very likely that most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations. Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates will cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century. The latest predictions of these changes have recently been published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will be reviewed in this talk.
Are Quantum Computers The Next Generation Of Supercomputers?
Reinhard Werner, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany
Wednesday, 27 Aug 2008
About the Speaker Professor Reinhard Werner was educated in Germany and the USA, at the universities in Clausthal, Marburg, and Rochester NY. He received his PhD in Physics at Marburg (1982), and the habilitation in Theoretical Physics at Osnabrück (1987). After some years in Osnabrück, he became Professor of Mathematics at the Technical University of Braunschweig in 1997, and very recently he accepted an offer from the University of Hannover. Professor Werner's research interests are the conceptual and mathematical foundations of quantum theory, including quantum statistical mechanics. More recently, he has become interested in Quantum Information theory. He is well-known for his many original contributions, in particular to the theory of entangled states. He is presently participating in a Session as part of the IMS Program on Mathematical Horizons for Quantum Physics.
Abstract Quantum Computers are said to outperform all classical computers, even the classical computers of the future. In particular, the standard public key encryption methods, which rely on the difficulty of factoring large numbers, could be broken on a quantum computer. In this talk, we will see how to make sense of such wild claims, and which features of quantum mechanics, the theory of atomic scale systems, enable such feats. We will also describe the current state of quantum technology, which still lags far behind the dreams, but has made remarkable progress in recent years. Quantum simulators, i.e., especially designed quantum systems, which simulate the dynamics of other quantum systems too complex for classical numerical methods, are singled out as the most likely candidate for the first quantum computer beating classical computers at a practically relevant task.
Knot or not Knot?
Burkhard Kümmerer, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
Wednesday, 13 Aug 2008
About the Speaker Professor Burkhard Kümmerer was educated in Germany at the University of Tübingen, his home town, where he earned his diploma (1979) and his PhD in mathematics (1982), and finally also the habilitation (1987). He held teaching and research appointments at various European institutions, including the King’s College London and the University of Heidelberg. In 1997, he was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Stuttgart, and since 2002 he is Professor of Mathematics at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Professor Kümmerer has received numerous prizes and awards in recognition of his excellence as a researcher and teacher. His research in the fields of operator algebras and quantum probability are highly appreciated by his peers. His outstanding contributions include work on the mathematical aspects of quantum scattering theory, a subject on which he collaborated with Professor Hans Maassen. Both of them are presently organizing a Session as part of the IMS Program on Mathematical Horizons for Quantum Physics.
Abstract Knots are found in Celtic ornaments and the story, how Alexander the Great "untied" the Gordic knot is legendary. But why are serious mathematicians spending their time with knots? Do sailors really need their help? The path along which knots found their way into mathematics is more entwined. The problem of how sailors on their journeys round the world could navigate on the oceans has made the great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss to think about knots. Some years later people were hoping to understand the periodic table of chemical elements by studying knots. What is knot theory about? It tries to answer the simple question, whether a knot is really knotted or whether it is only looking complicated but nevertheless can be disentangled to become a circle (without using a pair of scissors). More generally, one is asking whether two knots are "equal". In our talk we take a look at the origins of knot theory and we look with the eyes of mathematicians at messing up a knot. A method for distinguishing different knots by attributing to them certain polynomials is one of the great achievements in recent mathematics: For this discovery V. Jones was awarded the fields medal in 1990, which is the most distinguished price in mathematics. Essential features of this discovery can be understood with only elementary mathematics. We end this talk by mentioning some further unexpected applications. The talk is on knots but it is also on the question: "What is mathematics?" Mathematics is more than about numbers, mathematics requires lots of fantasy, and, last but not least: mathematics is fun.
Climate Past, Climate Present and Climate Future: A Tale from a Statistician
Douglas Nychka, US National Center for Atmospheric Research
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
About the Speaker Professor Douglas Nychka is the Director of the Institute for Mathematics Applied to the Geosciences (IMAGe) and a Senior Scientist in the Geophysical Statistics Project (GSP) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at Boulder, Colorado. Before that, he was at North Carolina State University and National Institute of Statistical Science (NISS), NC. He is world renowned for ground-breaking and multidisciplinary research that spans a wide range from basic statistical science to atmospheric science, climatology, environmetrics and the geosciences. Through his own work and through his direction as project leader and active research collaboration and inspiring mentorship at GSP, he has exerted a tremendous influence on the modeling and analysis of atmospheric data, such as those in ocean winds, dispersion of pollutants, extreme precipitation and the assessment of climate models. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and was awarded the NISS Jerry Sacks Award for Multidisciplinary Research in 2004. His current research interests are in nonparametric regression (mostly splines), statistical computing, spatial statistics and spatial designs. He is engaged on projects investigating the large sample properties of geostatistics estimators and applications of inverse methods and hierarchical models to the reconstruction of past climate. He is a key player in the study of climate change.
Abstract A grand scientific challenge for this century is to understand the complex interrelationships among the physical processes and human activities that define the Earth’s climate. One specific concern is the warming of our climate brought about by the increase of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, being released into the atmosphere. What do we know about the Earth’s past climate? Is global warming over the last century real? What is a climate model and how is it used to understand changes in our future climate? In answering each of these questions, statistical science can play a role in quantifying the uncertainty in scientific conclusions, for combining different kinds of information and summarizing complex data.
Data Mining with Modeling: Managing Diabetes
Larry Shepp, Rutgers University
Thursday, 24 April 2008
About the Speaker Professor Larry Shepp is renowned for his pioneering and fundamental contributions to discrete tomography and for his work on applications of probability, statistics and mathematics to physics, engineering, communications, genetics and mathematical finance. His work in tomography has a profound influence on biomedical imaging with important applications in medical X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance technology. He is a member of the U.S. National academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine (Institute of Medicine) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his research in stochastic processes and computer tomography, he has won awards and recognition from major scientific and professional bodies such as IEEE and Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is actively involved in editorial work and services for leading journals in probability, imaging sciences and computer assisted tomography. He was professor of statistics in Stanford University and Columbia University before joining Rutgers University in 1997 and has been the Board of Governor’s Professor of Statistics since 2004. Before joining academia, he worked in Bell Laboratories from 1962 to 1980. After joining academia, he continues to contribute his expertise in the service of the medical and engineering industries.
Abstract Should one allow data to “speak for itself” or should one inject one's preconceptions of the data set at hand with a mathematical model? In the '60's, John Tukey and his followers brought exploratory data analysis into statistics, partly as a revolt against what was then perceived as an overly rigid and brittle mathematical modeling philosophy that held sway at that time. Some problems seem to demand such a purely data-driven approach. Tukey did not want to be biased by preconceived ideas about the origin of the data by formulating a model. Instead, he wanted to allow the data to “speak for itself'”, via graphical methods alone. I will argue that Tukey's approach, as he stated it, does not permit the solution to a problem to depend on the problem; and thereby inhibits statistics to grow and interact with the rest of science. I will illustrate my point with data-mining examples, in particular discussing a new large data set composed of glucose levels of blood of a large number of diabetics at 5 minute intervals over a period of a year to study the important problem of how to make algorithmic use of these readings for closed-loop control of an insulin pump.
Applied Partial Differential Equations: A Visual Appoach
Peter Markowich, University of Cambridge, UK and University of Vienna, Austria
Tuesday, 11 Dec 2007
About the Speaker Peter A. Markowich works in the area of partial differential equations and their applications in science and engineering. He holds a Chair in Applied Mathematics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge. He is also Professor at the University of Vienna and leader of a research group at the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics in Linz. He was the recipient of the Austrian Wittgenstein Award in 2000 and of the Wolfson Research Merit Award of the Royal Society in 2007.
Abstract The lecture illustrates topics of science/engineering, which occur in nature and/or are part of our daily lives. The described natural/engineering phenomena are modeled by partial differential equations, which relate physical variables like mass, velocity, energy etc. to their spatial and temporal variations. Typically these equations are highly nonlinear, in many cases they are also vectorial systems, and they represent a challenge even for the most modern and sophisticated mathematical-analytical and mathematical-numerical techniques. The chosen topics reflect the longtime scientific interests of the author. They include flows of fluids and gases, granular material flows, biological processes like pattern formation on animal skins, kinetics of rarified gases and semiconductor devices. Each topic is briefly presented in its scientific or engineering context, followed by an introduction of the mathematical models in the form of partial differential equations with a discussion of the most basic mathematical properties. Also, each topic is highlighted by a series of high quality photographs, taken by the author. They illustrate in an allegoric way that partial differential equations can be used to address a large variety of phenomena occurring in and influencing our daily lives. The lecture is based on a book with the same title, authored by the speaker and published by Springer Verlag Heidelberg in 2006.
What is Mathematical Biology and How Useful is it?
Avner Friedman, Director, Mathematical Biosciences Institute, Ohio State University
Thursday, 13 December 2007
About the Speaker Professor Avner Friedman has made important contributions, both in theory and applications, to partial differential equations, stochastic differential equations and control theory. His career, especially during the past two decades, epitomizes a personal mission and relentless drive in bringing the tools of modern analysis to bear in the service of industry and science. He was the Director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at Minneapolis from 1987 to 1997 and has been the Director of the Mathematical Biosciences Institute of the Ohio State University since 2001. He is also Distinguished University Professor at the Ohio State University. He has served on many U.S. national boards and advisory committees. He has also served and continues to serve on the editorial boards of numerous leading journals in analysis, applied mathematics and mathematical physics. His prolific research and scholarly output has resulted in more than 400 publications, written singly and jointly, and 20 books. Among the honors and awards he has received for his wide-ranging contributions are the Stampacchia Prize, NSF Special Creativity Award, and membership of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. As a founding member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the NUS Institute for Mathematical Sciences, he has contributed to the development and success of the Institute since its inception in 2000.
Abstract Biological processes are very complex, and mathematical models of such processes are at best just a crude approximation. Nevertheless one can gain some useful knowledge from the models. In this talk, I shall give examples of biological and biomedical problems that have been addressed by mathematical models. The examples will be from areas as diverse as wound healing, hemodialysis, tuberculosis, and cancer.
Quantum World of Ultra-Cold Atoms
Christopher Foot, University of Oxford, UK
Tuesday, 13 Nov 2007
About the Speaker After having begun his physics career with a first-class honours degree and doctorate from the University of Oxford, Professor Christopher Foot spent several years working at Stanford University, supported for part of that time by a Lindemann Trust Fellowship. He returned to the Oxford Physics Department and started research on laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Since 1991 he has been a tutorial fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford. His current research interests include the study of the superfluid properties of ultra-cold atomic gases (Bose-Einstein condensates), and experiments on ultra-cold atoms held in arrays of optical traps formed by laser light to study the quantum properties of many-particle systems. Such atomic physics techniques give very precise control over the cold-atom systems so that they can be used to simulate phenomena that occur in condensed matter physics and, in the future, for quantum information processing.
Abstract Nowadays it is possible to cool atoms to temperatures less than a millionth of a degree (microkelvin) above absolute zero and this enables us to study the many fascinating quantum mechanical properties of atomic systems at such extremely low temperatures. The lecture will describe the tremendous advances in physics that have made such experiments possible, and which led to the Nobel prizes in physics for the “development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light” in 1997, and for the “achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms” in 2001. It seems counterintuitive that shining laser light on atoms cools them and this will be explained, together with the way that laser beams are used to hold the cold atoms at fixed positions in space and arrange them into regular patterns to construct ultra-cold quantum matter. The concepts will be explained without mathematics in a manner suitable for a general audience.
Real People, Virtual Worlds: Watching a Plague Unfold
Nina Fefferman, Rutgers University and Tufts University, USA
Monday, 29 Oct 2007
About the Speaker Professor Nina Fefferman is an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University and the Co-Director of the Tufts University School of Medicine Initiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics and a Ph.D. in biology. She has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Defense University, and has worked closely with the US Department of Homeland Security, all in the areas of biodefense.
Abstract Infectious disease passes from person to person, from friend to friend, from parent to child, from shopkeeper to customer. Basic social interactions, necessary in every day life, can suddenly become themselves life-threatening in outbreaks of deadly disease. One of the fundamental problems in understanding how diseases will spread, and how that spread will affect society, is understanding how people will (possibly) change their behaviors in the face of an outbreak. In 2005, an accidental plague unleashed in the game world, "World of Warcraft (R)" (by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.), provided a first glimpse of how scientists might be able to exploit these virtual game worlds to study how people react socially to communal threat from infectious disease. As recently reported in the Lancet Infectious Diseases (and covered by BBC World News, the Associated Press, and Reuters news agencies, among others) we will discuss what current mathematical models of disease spread can predict about disease, and how these virtual games may be able to help us all plan for global pandemics.
Mathematical Models of Dengue Fever
Eduardo Massad, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Wednesday, 24 Oct 2007
About the Speaker Professor Eduardo Massad is Professor of Medical Informatics at the University of São Paulo in Brazil and has been an Honorary Professor of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine since 2003. He visited Singapore in 2005 as the inaugural Courage Fund Visiting Professor of Infectious Disease and Epidemiology. His present visit is also sponsored by the Courage Fund. Professor Massad’s main research interests are in Medical Informatics and Mathematical Biology. He is a world-renowned specialist in the field of infectious disease epidemiology and the mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. He has done a wide range of modeling work spanning Dengue, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A, vaccine preventable diseases, parasitology, HIV and antimicrobial resistance.
Abstract Mathematical modelling enables medical and research workers to discover the likely outcome of an epidemic or to help determine optimal control strategies against infectious diseases. In this public lecture, an original mathematical model of dengue transmission will be presented. The model takes into account the impact of temperature increase on the Aedes mosquito population. The model is tested against real data from Singapore and it explains a number of epidemiological features of the last epidemics.
Robot Swarms and the Topology of Coordination
Robert Ghrist, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
About the Speaker Robert Ghrist is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with Research Professor appointments at that university's Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Information Trust Institute. Prof. Ghrist is also a founding member of CAESAR, the Center for Autonomous Engineering Systems And Robotics at the University of Illinois. Professor Ghrist's research covers a broad array of topological methods in applied mathematics. These include applications of knot and braid theory in differential equations, applications of contact topology in fluid dynamics, applications of geometric group theory in robotics, and applications of algebraic topology in sensor networks. Professor Ghrist has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toledo (BS 1991, valedictorian) and graduate degrees in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University (MS 1994, PhD 1995). Professor Ghrist held postdoctoral appointments at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton) and the University of Texas (Austin), followed by assistant and associate professorships at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois. Professor Ghrist is the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award and was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President G. W. Bush in 2004. Professor Ghrist was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois in 2007.
Abstract The ability to fabricate increasingly smaller and cheaper sensing and actuation devices portends a future in which swarms of robots provide critical services, including searchand-rescue at disaster sites, environmental monitoring, and border security. But as individual robots and sensors shrink in size and cost, they multiply in number, requiring methods of coordination. One of the most fundamental and challenging problems is moving from local information (at the level of individual robots) to a global understanding of an environment (at the level of the full swarm). A century ago, mathematicians invented a new field --- ``topology,'‘ the study of abstract spaces --- to handle very similar issues of passing from local to global. A century of subsequent work has yielded a dizzying array of elegant algebraic tools which have remained largely hidden within Mathematics. This talk will illustrate several surprising applications of this once-esoteric mathematical subject to the understanding and control of robot and sensor swarms.
Computer and Genomes
Michael Waterman, University of Southern California
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
About the Speaker Professor Michael Waterman received his bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Oregon State University and his Ph.D. in Statistics and Probability from Michigan State University. He held positions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Idaho State University before joining the University of Southern California in 1982. He now holds an Endowed Associates Chair at USC and is Professor-at-large at the Keck Graduate Institute of Life Sciences. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Singapore's Bioinformatics Institute. Professor Waterman works in the area of Computational Biology, concentrating on the creation and application of methods in mathematics, statistics and computer science to solve fundamental problems in molecular biology, particularly those arising from DNA, RNA and protein sequence data. He is the co-developer of the Smith-Waterman algorithm for sequence comparison and of the Lander- Waterman formula for physical mapping. A founding editor of Journal of Computational Biology, he is on the editorial board of seven journals, and is co-author of the two classic texts Introduction to Computational Biology: Maps, Sequences and Genomes and Computational Genome Analysis: An Introduction. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995, the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 and the French Academy of Sciences in 2005. He became the first Fellow of Celera Genomics in 2000 and received a Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2002.
Abstract The modern revolution on biology based on the decoding of the genomic material of many organisms including man would have been impossible without the extensive and pervasive use of computers. This lecture will describe and trace a computational theme and method which played an essential role in this revolution, and which continues to be extensively used today. In addition recent studies on human genome variation including race will be described.
Mathematical Aspects of Financial Risk
Hans Föllmer, Humboldt University
Thursday, 15 February 2007
About the Speaker Hans Föllmer is world renowned for fundamental multi-disciplinary contributions to statistical mechanics, stochastic analysis and mathematical finance. With a broad education in philosophy, languages, physics and mathematics in four European universities, he obtained his doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Erlangen. He has taught at MIT, ETH Zurich and the University of Bonn, and is professor of mathematics at Humboldt University, Berlin since 1994. He received the following prestigious awards: Emmy Noether award (University of Erlangen), Science Prize of the GMÖOR (Gesellschaft für Mathematik, Ökonomie und Operations Research), Prix Gay- Lussac/Humboldt and the Georg Cantor Medal of the German Mathematical Society. He is a member of Academia Europaea, Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, and Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. He is actively engaged in the training of scientists and mathematicians both inside and outside of Europe. He is involved in the International Research Training Group (IRTG) Berlin-Zurich and the DFG Research Center "Mathematics for key technologies". He is also a member of the IMS Scientific Advisory Board and is advisor to the NUS Department of Mathematics financial mathematics program.
Abstract Concepts and methods, which have been developed within mathematics for purely theoretical reasons, often turn out to be highly relevant in other areas. Stochastic calculus is a striking example for this "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics": Invented by Kiyosi Itô as a means of understanding the microstructure of Markov processes, it has become a key technology in the world of finance. The speaker will first sketch the amazing story which led from Bachelier's use of Brownian motion as a model for the fluctuation of stock prices to the formula of Black and Scholes for option pricing and to the emergence of a new scientific field at the interface of mathematics, economics, and finance. He will then describe some recent developments beyond the Black-Scholes paradigm of a perfect hedge, and in particular new approaches to the quantification of financial risk.
The Role of Mathematics and Computer Science in Molecular Biology Research
Martin Tompa, University of Washington, USA
Wednesday, 19 Jul 2006
About the Speaker Professor Martin Tompa graduated from Harvard University in 1974 and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 1978. For the next 7 years he was on the Computer Science faculty at the University of Washington, where he received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1984, the inaugural year for these awards. From 1985 to 1989 he was on the staff of the IBM Research Division at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and became manager of its Theory of Computation group. In 1989 he rejoined the Computer Science faculty at the University of Washington, and in 1998 and 1999 received the first two ACM Undergraduate Teaching Awards. Professor Tompa's research interests are in computational complexity and computational molecular biology, with emphases on biological sequence analysis and regulatory analysis.
Abstract What role do mathematicians and computer scientists have to play in the genome projects that have revolutionized biology over the past decade? The speaker will try to give some indication by looking in some depth at two particular problems in the analysis of biological sequences. One is an overview of how the human genome was sequenced. The other is called "phylogenetic footprinting", and is a method for discovering functional regions of DNA by comparing the DNA sequences of multiple species. No prior knowledge of mathematics, computer science, or molecular biology will be assumed.
Epidemics in Technological and Social Networks: The Downside of Six Degrees of Separation
J.T. Chayes, Microsoft Research
Friday, 9 Jun 2006
About the Speaker Professor Jennifer Tour Chayes is an expert in the emerging field at the interface of mathematics, physics and theoretical computer science. Her current research focuses on phase transitions in combinatorics and computer science, structural and dynamical properties of self-engineered networks, and algorithmic game theory. She is the coauthor of over 80 scientific papers and the coinventor of 13 patents. Professor Chayes is co-founder and co-manager of the Microsoft Theory Group, as well as Research Area Manager for Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science at Microsoft Research. She also heads the new Algorithms, Computation and E-Commerce (ACE) subgroup of the Microsoft Theory Group. Professor Chayes is Affiliate Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Washington, and was for many years Professor of Mathematics at UCLA. She serves on numerous institute boards, advisory committees and editorial boards, including the the Board of Trustees of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, the Scientific Board of the Fields Institute, the Advisory Boards of the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science and the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, the Communications Advisory Committee of the National Academies, the U.S. National Committee for Mathematics, the Association for Computing Machinery Advisory Committee on Women in Computing, the Leadership Advisory Council of the Anita Borg Institute, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Commission on Statistical Physics. Professor Chayes is a past Chair of the Mathematics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a past Vice-President of the American Mathematical Society.
Abstract During the past decade, complex networks have become increasingly important in communication and information technology. Vast, self-engineered networks, like the Internet, the World Wide Web, and Instant Messaging Networks, have facilitated the flow of information, and served as a medium for social and economic interaction. In social networks, the ease of information flow goes by many names: the “small world” phenomenon, the “Kevin Bacon phenomenon,” and “six degrees of separation” -- the claim that any two people on earth can be connected through a chain of acquaintances with at most five intermediaries. Unfortunately, many of the properties that facilitate information transmission also facilitate the spread of viruses in both technological and social networks. The speaker uses simple mathematical models to explain these epidemics and to examine strategies for their containment.
Trends in Wireless Communications
Sergio Verdú, Princeton University
Tuesday, 28 Feb 2006
About the Speaker Professor Sergio Verdú is Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University where he teaches and conducts research on information theory. He is also affiliated with the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. Professor Verdú was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He received the Telecommunications Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1980 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984. He was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the 2000 Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. In 2005, he received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. His papers have received several awards: the D. Fink Paper Award from the IEEE, the 1998 Information Theory Outstanding Paper Award, a Golden Jubilee Paper Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society, the 2000 Paper Award from the Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, and the 2002 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Award from the IEEE Communications Society. Professor Verdú was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1993 and was President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1997. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory.
Abstract This talk gives an overview of recent advances and current trends in wireless communications technologies. Our emphasis is on physical-layer techniques used to improve spectral efficiency for multiuser channels subject to fading.
The Epidemic Clockwork: Exploring the Population Dynamics of Infectious Diseases
Bryan T. Grenfell, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Tuesday, 23 Aug 2005
About the Speaker Professor Bryan Grenfell is a population biologist, focusing in particular on the dynamics of infectious diseases in space and time. He combines the development of theory with pioneering analyses of empirical data sets from a range of diseases: from measles to Foot and Mouth Disease and influenza. Originally trained as a zoologist, Professor Grenfell has worked on the dynamics of epidemics since 1980. He recently moved from Cambridge University, UK, to the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics in Pennsylvania State University, USA. Professor Grenfell was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2002 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Abstract Infectious diseases have exerted a huge toll on human and animal populations, both historically and up to the present. Starting with measles as an example, this lecture explores how the pattern of epidemics in space and time depends on a balance between the spread of infection, the natural 'herd immunity' of the population and our efforts to control the infection by vaccination and other means. The speaker will discuss how the evolution of influenza and other disease causing organisms affect the pattern of epidemics and our ability to control them.
Logic and Computation
Ted Slaman, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Monday, 1 August 2005
About the Speaker Professor Theodore Slaman received his Bachelor's Degree from Pennsylvania State University, his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1981 and joined the University of Chicago thereafter. He was promoted to full Professor at the University of Chicago in 1987 and joined University of California, Berkeley in 1992 where he is currently the Chair of Department. He has made fundamental contributions to the field of recursion theory and was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1990 (Toyko, Japan).
Abstract Two of the great virtues of Mathematics are its wide applicability and its precise verifiability. In Mathematics, we prove that our conclusions are correct and calculate accurate answers to quantitative questions. What happens to us when the methods of proof and computation are insufficient? In the 1930's, K. Gödel gave fascinating ways to generate true statements in elementary arithmetic which cannot be proven. Proof and computation are reflections of each other, and a similar incompleteness exists in the methods of computation. There is a detailed and beautiful structure supporting mathematical methodology. In this talk, the speaker will discuss his favorite aspects of this structure. The one that he likes the best is the border between finite and infinite, but there are others more surprising.
Can a wire have a memory?
Georg Dolzmann, University of Maryland
Thursday, 13 Jan 2005
About the Speaker Prof. Dolzmann received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University Bonn in 1992. After several years of postgraduate studies in Rome, Freiburg, Leipzig, Pittsburgh, and Pasadena, he accepted a position at the University of Maryland at College Park. In his research he combines theoretical and numerical techniques to the analysis and simulation of mathematical problems related to applications in materials science.
Abstract The search for optimal shapes has inspired scientists for centuries. A celebrated example is Johann Bernoulli's challenge at the end of the seventeenth century: Given the top and the bottom point of a slide, what shape would the slide need to have for a ball to slide from the top to the bottom in the shortest possible time? Is it a straight line, is it an arc of a circle, or is it a different curve? Bernoulli's challenge is often regarded as the starting point for one of the most successful fields in mathematics, the so-called Calculus of Variations. Broadly speaking, it deals with all sorts of problems that require minimizing a suitable function. A good example would be the question how to find the minimum of the parabola y=x² (which would of course be the origin). In Bernoulli's example it is the time the ball takes to go from the top to the bottom of the slide. This is a more difficult task, and we will describe the solution only geometrically - it is an interesting curve which has a lot of fascinating properties. Now how do all these relate to the title of this lecture? You might be tempted to say that a wire cannot possibly have a memory! However, I will show you that this is in fact possible by making an experiment with a so-called shape memory wire. Similar wires are being used today for example in stents in heart surgery. The explanation for this effect lies again in the fact that the wire tries to minimize something! These surprising connections between the century old field of the Calculus of Variations and modern applications to materials with memory have stimulated a lot of research in mathematics today.
The Mathematics of Scientific Computation
Eitan Tadmor, University of Maryland
Wednesday, 12 Jan 2005
About the Speaker Eitan Tadmor is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and the Director of the University Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM). Tadmor's primary research interests include the development of novel, high-resolution algorithms for the approximate solution of time-dependent problems and the interplay between analytical theory and computational aspects of such approximate methods, with applications to shockwaves, kinetic transport, and incompressible flows. Tadmor received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tel Aviv University (TAU) in 1979 and began his scientific career in CalTech, 1980-1982. He held professorship positions at TAU, 1983-1998, and at UCLA, 1995-2004, where he was the founding co-director of the NSF Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) in 1999-2001. Since 2002, he serves on the faculty of the Department of Mathematics and the Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology in the University of Maryland. Tadmor serves on the editorial boards of more than a dozen international journals and has given numerous invited lectures, including plenary addresses in the international conferences on hyperbolic problems in 1990 and 1998 and an invited lecture in the 2002 Internation Congress of Mathematicians. He published more than one hundred research papers, mostly in Numerical Analysis and applied Partial Differential Equations.
Abstract Before emails and media players, the sole purpose of computers was to perform scientific computations. That purpose remains the central task of today's high performance computers. Indeed, scientific computation has emerged as one of the fundamental tools of scientific investigation, and it has revolutionized the scientific methodology through its interplay with experiments and theory. Numerical algorithms are at the heart of this revolution. They simulate quantitative assembly of different small scale dynamics and convert it into accurate predictions of large scale phenomena. It is here that mathematics, modeling and experiments interact through scientific computation. In this talk, the speaker will provide a bird's eye view on the mathematics behind numerical algorithms. He will review applications ranging from computational fluid dynamics and image processing to weather prediction and computational tomography.
Macromolecular "Fluids" and Liquid Crystals
Qi Wang, Florida State University
Wednesday, 12 Jan 2005
About the Speaker Prof Wang is currently Professor of Mathematics, Director of Applied Mathematics Program at the Florida State University. Many remarkable materials are produced through processing of complex fluids, e.g. high performance light weight polymeric materials like vectran and kevlar that have been used widely in industrial and military applications, household materials, like egg yolks, glues, shampoos, ketchups, and many more in our daily life. Due to their complex molecular compositions and intermolecular interaction, the materials may exhibit fascinating mesoscopic structures in equilibrium and transient leading to extraordinary material properties. His research focuses on developing mathematical models to analyze the flowing materials and simulate their flow phenomena in various flow geometries.
Abstract Many flowing materials in nature and in the world of man-made materials are made of "large" (macromolecular) molecules or inclusions (micro or nanosized particles). Sometimes, it is hard to call them liquids anymore because they flow very slowly. Do you know how fast KETCHUP flows? Several tens of miles per year! These macromolecular fluids exhibit many properties between a "true" fluid and a solid. Can you imagine materials like playdoughs are actually complex fluids? All these are due to their microstructural compositions and intermolecular interactions. Due to the molecular interaction among the macromolecular molecules and/or inclusions, the materials may show quite distinctive behavior than the liquids that one is familiar with such as water, cooking oil, etc. For example, if you disturb some polymeric liquids using a rotating rod, you will see the materials climb up along the rod. This is the well-known rod-climbing phenomenon for complex fluids. You can experiment with it at home with eggs and an egg-beater or other household materials. When the materials are extruded from a tube, they swell due to the relaxation of the elastic stress. Also, you can suck them up with a capillary tube even if the tube is pulled well above the averaged surface of the fluids. Liquid crystals are macromolecular fluids of rigid molecules that can form partial orientational order and are sensitive to external fields. Because of it, liquid crystal display devices (LCD) have been widely used in computer monitors, TVs, high resolution display devices these days. High strength and high performance materials like vectran are manufactured commercially from liquid crystal materials. In this talk, I will introduce the some complex fluids and their fascinating properties and discuss how we can model them mathematically.
The Romance of Hidden Components
David Donoho, Statistics Department, Stanford University, USA
Wednesday, 25 August 2004
About the Speaker David Donoho is one of the most distinguished statistical scientists in the world. His ground-breaking research in data analysis and reconstruction is widely used. This work finds application in a number of different areas ranging from medical imaging to seismology and astronomy. His recent work used wavelets and other novel mathematical tools to help scientists get sharper signals and images. He earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton in 1978 and his doctorate from Harvard in 1984. He joined the faculty at the University of California-Berkeley in 1984, moved to Stanford in 1990, and is currently Professor of Statistics and the Anne and Robert Bass Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. Honored for his fundamental work in statistical sciences, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and the National Academy of Sciences USA in 1998. He was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1991-1996, the Presidents' Award of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Sciences in 1994, and the John von Neumann Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2001. He was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians 2002.
Abstract Perhaps the most romantic and seductive idea in all of science is that, hiding behind the enormously complex structures we see in the world around us, there are hidden components that are on the one hand very simple and even elegant and on the other hand easily combine to generate all the variety we see about us. Classical examples include Newton and the spectrum of light, Eugenecists and the idea of IQ; modern examples include wavelets and quarks. The speaker will review some of the classical ideas of hidden components, starting from principal components or even before, and describe some of the most recent notions, such as independent components analysis, sparse components analysis, nonnegative matrix factorizations, and cumulant components. He will try to keep things at an elementary level, communicating the attractiveness of these ideas to scientists and engineers outside of statistics, the wide-ranging impact these ideas are having from high-tech industry to neuroscience and astronomy, and describing what he thinks is the much greater role that statisticians should be playing in developing and deploying these methods.
Genes, Disease and Genetic Diseases
Terry Speed University of California at Berkeley and Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Wednesday, 7 January 2004
About the Speaker Terry Speed is world renowned for his important contributions to the applications of statistics to genetics and molecular biology, and in particular, to biomolecular sequence analysis, the mapping of genes in experimental crosses and human pedigrees, and the analysis of gene expression data. A member of the NIH Genome Study Section from 1995 to 1998, he investigated fundamental problems arising from the Human Genome Project. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences, American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been on the editorial boards of many international journals including the Annals of Statistics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Statistical Science, Bernoulli and Journal of Computational Biology. He is currently the President of the US-based Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
Abstract Emerging from its beginnings about 100 years ago with the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws of hereditary, genetics is now experiencing a hitherto unimagined explosion in molecular and biological data brought about by breakthroughs in biotechnology. This has spawned the new field of bioinformatics which is helping biomedical scientists in storing, retrieving, displaying, analyzing and interpreting the complex of data. The advent of the recent human and other genome projects has resulted in geneticists turning to mathematics and statistics for assistance in unraveling the connection between genes and diseases. From the earliest recognition of the role of single gene defects in rare hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s chorea and Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, it is now known that more common diseases like diabetes and multiple sclerosis and susceptibility to malaria may be caused by multiple genes and by the environment. Such diseases are known as complex genetic traits and pose a much greater challenge to human geneticists in bearing and resolving the overall human disease burden. This talk will illustrate some aspects of statistical genetics and bioinformatics in the context of our continuing efforts to understand particular complex genetic traits.
Mathematics in the Real World and the Fake World
Stanley Osher, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Thursday, 18 December 2003
About the Speaker Stanley Osher is the Director of Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Los Ange- les. He has won many awards, including the NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award and the Pioneer Prize of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is the co- inventor of various methods in applied mathematics and scientific computing. His work has been written up numerous times in the scientific and international media. He has co-founded three companies based, in part, on his own research.
Abstract With the advent of the computer we can now develop algorithms that perform incredible tasks-special effects in Hollywood, catching bad guys on video, predicting all kinds of natural and un- natural phenomena. A common theme in these algorithms is rather elementary geometry. In this talk the speaker will discuss geometric algorithms and their applications in every day life.
What's Math got to do with it? Mathematics at the Frontiers of Sciences and Technology
Tony Chan, Department of Mathematics, University of California, USA
Monday, 15 December 2003
About the Speaker Tony Chan has made many interdisciplinary contributions to applied mathematics and scientific computing. He serves on the editorial boards of well-known journals on applied mathematics and is actively involved in various mathematical and scientific organizations in the United States. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Univer- sity of California, Los Angeles. He is also the Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences.
Abstract Mathematics is at the foundation of our highly technological society. The application of mathematics can be found in almost all walks of life, and often in the most unexpected places. In this talk, the speaker will provide some examples of interesting applications of frontier research mathematics in areas that are quite close to everyday life. Examples include the movies, the stock market, the internet, medicine, communication, etc.
The Search for Randomness
Persi Diaconis, Stanford University
Thursday, 19 August 2003
About the Speaker Persi Diaconis, a legendary figure in mathematics, studied violin at Juilliard and magic with Dai Vernon, who has been called the greatest magician in the US. For 10 years from the age of 14, he pursued a successful and colorful career as a magician until his destiny was changed after a friend recommended him a book on probability which he could not understand. It led to his enrollment into mathematics programs in the City College of New York and Harvard University. The rest, as they say, is history. He is currently the Mary Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University. Honored for his fundamental work in statistics and probability (including the mathematics of card shuffling), he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989 and the National Academy of Sciences USA in 1995. He was President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a Gibbs Lecturer of the American Mathematical Society and a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians. His diverse interests have led him to write on parapsychology, and to introduce mathematical magic shows. As he says, “Inventing a magic trick and inventing a theorem are very, very similar activities.”
Abstract The speaker will discuss some of our most primitive examples of random phenomena: tossing a coin, rolling dice and shuffling cards. While common practice can produce randomness, usually a close look shows that it just isn't so.