About the program

This semester (through the kind support of Professors Karen Uhlenbeck and Bill Beckner) our department will be hosting the Distinguished Women in Mathematics lecture series. The primary goal of this program is to bring outstanding women mathematicians to Austin to give talks on their research. An additional goal is to promote interactions between these distinguished researchers and graduate students.

There will be three visiting researchers this semester, all experts in different areas. They will each give a colloquium and be available for both formal and informal visits with students. In the week preceding these talks, we will host a preparatory meeting to give interested students necessary background information.

This is an extremely exciting opportunity for our department, especially for the younger students, to be exposed to top researchers.

These meetings will be held at RLM 6.104, unless otherwise indicated.

Announcements

Discussion Group: We will discuss the basics of representation theory for simple Lie algebras. We would also say a few words about the definition and explicit realization of affine Lie algebras. A couple of papers by Prof. Chari that could be helpful as pointers to the kind of problems she is looking into can be found here and here.

When: Friday, April 11th at 1pm.

Where: RLM 12.166.

Brown Bag lunch: An informal discussion with the speaker intended for women graduate / undergardute students and faculty.

When: Monday, April 14th at noon.

Where: RLM 12th floor lounge.

Schedule

Monday February 4 at 4pm Location: RLM 6.104 Speaker: Paula Tretkoff (Texas A&M) Topic: Number Theory Title: "Aspects of transcendental number theory" Abstract: We discuss an assortment of results on the transcendence properties of special values of modular and hypergeometric functions. The emphasis will be on open problems and connections with other branches of mathematics. The talk will be accessible to a general audience. Students are encouraged to attend. For the preparatory talk we read a survey paper by Michel Waldschmidt, which can be found here.

Monday March 3 at 4pm Location: RLM 6.104 Speaker: Panagiota Daskalopoulos (Columbia) Topic: Geometric Flow Title: "Surface Evolution under Curvature Flows: Existence and Optimal Regularity" Abstract:We will discuss the evolution of a hyper-surface in R^{n+1} by functions of its principal curvatures. Typical examples include the Mean Curvature flow, the Gauss Curvature flow, the Inverse Mean Curvature flow and the Harmonic Mean Curvature flow. These flows are described by non-linear parabolic equations for the local embedding map. We will discuss the existence and optimal regularity for such equations as well as the formation of singularities in certain cases.

Monday April 14 at 4pm Location: RLM 6.104 Speaker: Vyjayanthi Chari (UC Riverside) Topic: Representation Theory Title: "Affine Algebras, Quivers and Koszulity" Abstract: The representation theory of the affine Lie algebras and their quantum analogs have been intensively studied in recent years. The subject has connections with number theory, topology and mathematical physics. The study of finite dimensional representations of these algebras is surprisingly complex, and is related to the mathematical structures which arise from solvable models in statistical mechanics. There are a number of different approaches to this study: a geometric approach via quiver varieties, a combinatorial approach using crystal bases and an algebraic approach using the classical methods of representation theory. In this talk, I will discuss some of these ideas and formulate some recent results which establish a connection between these representations and those of finite dimensional associative algebras.

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