| Date | |
| January 14 |
Speaker: Sanjai Gupta, Harvey Mudd Effective Classroom Strategies Abstract: When people ask me what it's like to be a teacher, I say it's like acting, but you're allowed to make mistakes. So how does one act in the classroom? In this talk you will experience things I do in the classroom and hear practical advice gathered from my own teaching experiences.
|
| January 28th |
Speaker: Audrey Terras, UCSD Title: A new kind of zeta function: When number theory meets graph theory Abstract: The talk is an introduction to zeta functions of graphs by comparison with the zeta functions of number theory such as Riemann's zeta function. Basic properties will be discussed, including: the Ihara formula saying that the zeta function is the reciprocal of a polynomial. I will then explore graph analogs of the Riemann hypothesis, the prime number theorem and connections with expander graphs and quantum chaos. References include my joint papers with Harold Stark in Advances in Mathematics. There is also a book I am writing on my website: http://math.ucsd.edu/~aterras/newbook.pdf .
|
| February 4th |
Speaker: Alexandra Pettet, Stanford Title: Groups and Spines Abstract: One of the best possible situations to be in when studying a group G is to have a nice topological space on which it acts. "Nice" may mean that the space is contractible and cocompact, with the structure of a simplicial complex and a free G-action. This situation can make it possible, for example, to study presentations or cohomology of G. Usually we have to make do with a G-space which is not quite so nice, but we can often get by almost as well. For example, although we may not start with a space which is cocompact, we may be able to describe a G-invariant deformation retract which is cocompact; this is what we call a spine. I will describe examples for some important groups, namely the outer automorphism group of a free group and the special linear group SL_n(Z). I will also explain a theorem showing that our spine for SL_n(Z) is minimal, in the sense that it contains no smaller invariant retract; this is joint work with Juan Souto.
|
| February 11th | Speaker: Brittany Erickson, UCSB Title: Modeling Earthquakes Abstract: Earthquake prediction has been referred to as the "Holy Grail" of seismology. Although scientists disagree on whether or not we will ever be able to accurately predict when they will occur, we have been able to predict statistical quantities about earthquake strength and geographical distribution. It is interesting to note that many phenomena in geophysics obey scaling laws and exhibit fractal behavior. It took many years before these concepts gained any recognition, but their applicability to earthquake prediction is now widely recognized. The purpose of my talk will be to describe a few different ways in which geophysicists (and mathematicians) model earthquakes. I'll cover examples of scale invariance, complexity, and self-organized criticality in applications to geophysics.
|
| March 3rd |
Panel: Jeff Stopple, Alethea Barbaro, Ryan Blair, Melissa Flora, Rena Levitt, and Peterson Tretheway Topic: Surviving the Qualifying Exams
Abstract: It's a rite of passage we all go through. This weeks seminar will be a discussion different strategies you can use to successfully tackle your quals. |
| March 10th |
Panel Discussion: Lead by Julie Rowlett, UCSB Topic: Math Research
|
| Date | |
| October 1 |
Organizational Meeting Topic: The Hypatian Seminar organizational meeting will be held at 3:30 in South Hall 6635. We will be discussing ideas for the fall and winter quarters. Everyone is welcome--bring ideas! Hope to see you there. There will be snacks!
|
| October 8 |
Organizer: Brie Finegold Life as a Teaching Assistant Topic: This week we will have an informal discussion of teaching and being a teaching assistant. This is an opportunity for both inexperienced and experienced TA's to talk about how the first week of classes went, what our expectations and concerns are for the quarter, and how to become better instructors. |
| October 22 |
Organizer: Brie Finegold Film Clip Day Topic: Today we will be showing clips of mathematics in pop-culture (Remember the show Square One with Math Net? If not, it's because you're too young), and people talking about math/science in American culture (A woman computer scientist reading an essay about her life taken from the anthology "She's Such a Geek!"). I would also like to leave a little time at the end to talk about how we've seen math protrayed in the media, especially with relation to women, and what we like/don't like about it. As always, there will be snacks! |
| October 29 |
Organizer: Brie Finegold An Invitation to Undergraduate Women Topic: This coming Monday, we will be welcoming undergraduates in mathematics, especially women, to attend Hypatian Seminar. We will have an informal meeting where graduate students, post-docs, and faculty can talk to undergrads about what it's like to do research, how it was during their first few years of grad school, and what it's like to be a woman in academia. We hope also that undergrads will come share with us their questions and their impressions and opinions of academic life so far. |
| November 5 | Speaker: Sookyung Joo, UCSB
Abstract: This talk is an introduction to the mathematical theories of liquid crys- tals. Liquid crystal phases form when a material has a degree of positional or orientational ordering yet stays in a liquid state. We present the static and hydrodynamic theories of liquid crystals and consider the minimizers of the energies and solutions of the governing equations as a way to describe the influence of the temperature or applied fields.
|
| November 19 |
Speaker: Julie Rowlett, UCSB
Lie Groups, Number Theory, Spectral Geometry and Conferences!
Abstract: There will be two parts. Part I will be a summary of the interesting mathematics of the 6th International Conference on Lie Theory and Geometry, as well as some discussion of the connections between these 3 areas of mathematics. Part II will be a mini-guide for conferences: how to get invited, what to do when you're there, and what to do afterwards. It will be a very participatory talk, lots of questions welcome, and especially towards the end of the second part, comments will be welcome also.
|
| November 26 |
Speaker: Debra Lewis, Univ of Santa Cruz
Abstract: The goal of control theory is to determine what can be accomplished with limited influence and resources; optimal control seeks strategies that give the most bang for the buck. Pontryagin's Maximum Principle states that optimal solutions are solutions of a Hamiltonian system constructed from the cost function and the evolution equation for the state variables.Exploitation of this Hamiltonian structure, particularly the conservation law, is one of the crucial techniques in the analysis of nonlinear control problems. I'll give some background on optimal control and Hamiltonian systems, briefly discuss a famous control system -- the falling/self-righting cat -- that sparked my interest in the role of psychological costs in biomechanical control systems, and introduce a family of cost function modifications that may be useful in modeling such systems. These models combine a position-dependent cost term and a control-dependent moderation term that enforces a bound on the instantaneous control effort; tuning the moderation parameter adjusts the optimal behavior from "do it ASAP, whatever it takes" to "no big deal... chill out."
|
| December 3 |
Speaker: Emille Davie, UCSB
Abstract: The braid group on n strands was defined in the 1940s by Emile Artin and has since become a widely studied and useful tool in low dimensional topology. We will discus several different definitions of the braid group, as well as discuss some braid group representations. Finally, I will give a glimpse into how one representation was used in my thesis.
|
| Date |
Spring
2007 Schedule
|
| April 19 | Organizer: Alethea Barbaro, UCSB Abstract: We will have an organizational lunch to discuss the following topics:
|
| April 30 | Discussion
Leaders: Alethea Barbaro and Liana Dawson, UCSB
Introduction to Research Posters Abstract:
This week in the Hypatian Seminar, we will have an informal workshop about
making conference posters using LaTex. There will be a brief presentation
offering tips on poster-making and an opportunity to look Link to the web page to download the poster document class and sample LaTex files.
|
| May 14 | Panel:
Alethea Barbaro, Brie Finegold, Melissa Flora, and
Ricardo Garza, UCSB
Injecting
enthusiasm into your TA section Abstract:
Brie Finegold and Ricardo Garza will be leading a panel discussion on
teaching methodology Monday at 3:30pm in the Hypatian Seminar. The discussion
will center on teaching philosophies and different teaching methods in
the classroom. Attendees are encouraged to bring anecdotes from sections
and classes. Both success stories and horror stories are welcome! This
is an opportunity to share thoughts on teaching and will be pretty informal.
All are welcome, as always! Link to the web page for the list of ideas on being a teaching assistant
|
| May 21 | Reflections on the Job Search Abstract: Liana Dawson, Jared Hersh, and John Levitt will be discussing their experiences on the academic job market this year. They will talk about applications, interviews, and pitfalls you might encounter along the way. This will be an informal discussion and there will be lots of time for you to ask any questions you might have. This is a rare opportunity to hear an honest view of the job market from the perspective of graduate students in the math department. For the last few years, panels of this type have been helpful to students in the past who are thinking about going on the job market after graduate school (particularly the academic job market). Link to notes from the job search discussion
|
| June 4 |
Speaker: Julie Rowlett, UCSB Abstract: In this talk, I will present a to-do list of *everything* that you will need to have done by graduation and highlight the things you can do in the summer before graduation to make your last year easier. I will also give some general guidlines, insights and suggestions to help ease your last year of graduate school... At the end of the talk, I will also give some ideas, insights, and suggestions for the post-doctoral years.
Link to the slides from Julie's talk
|
| Date |
Winter
2007 Schedule
|
| January 29 |
Moderator: Alethea Barbaro, UCSB Abstract: The Hypatian Seminar will have an organizational meeting today at 3:30 in South Hall 6635. We will be discussing ideas of the winter and spring quarters. Everyone is welcome--bring ideas! Hope to see you there.
|
| February 5 |
Speaker: Jeff Stopple, UCSB Abstract: Hypatia (370-415 AD) is considered to be the last mathematician of the ancient world. This talk will be about the times she lived in as well as her work and her legacy.
|
| February 12 | Speaker:
Rena Levitt, UCSB Abstract:
In this talk I discuss the proof of the following theorem: if $K$
is a compact nonpositively curved triangle-square complex, then its
fundamental group is biautomatic. A triangle-square complex is a piecewise
Euclidean $2$-complex with each $2$-cell isometric to either an equilateral
triangle or square of unit side length. This reproves an generalizes
earlier results of Gersten and Short.
|
| February 26 | An Introduction to Beamer Abstract:
Beamer is a free program which you can download off the internet to
make slick presentations. It plays nicely with LaTex. This will be
an introduction to making presentations in Beamer. We will create
a talk together which will show what Beamer can do. Then we will post
it here for you to access. Come and bring friends! Link to the Beamer Talk (PDF file) Link
to all the files needed to create the Beamer talk
|
| March 5 | Speaker:
Brie Finegold, UCSB
Cool Math from the Annual AAAS Conference Abstract: I will talk about some of the interesting mathematics talks I went to in February. Also, I will say what the AAAS is and why more mathematicians should consider becoming members. Come hear a smattering about "stylometry," detecting fraud using mathematics, what math researchers say you should do to improve math ed., and why Toy Story II looked better than the first one. Link to Brie's PowerPoint Presentation
|
| March 12 |
Speaker: Björn Birnir, UCSB Abstract: We will discuss the works of the woman who broke the gender barrier in mathematics. She was the first major woman mathematician in modern times and the first one to become a professor in mathematics. Her work was fundamental and classical in PDEs, but less well known is that her work on the Kovalevsky top lead to important developments in integrable systems and algebraic geometry in the latter half of twentieth century. She had many brilliant mathematical insights but perhaps the most enduring one was the sufficiency condition in the classical Jacobi's theorem on integrable systems.
|
| Date |
Fall
2006 Schedule
|
| October 2 |
Moderator: Alethea Barbaro, UCSB Abstract: This year, the seminar will be every Monday from 3:30-4:30PM as the Student Seminar is no longer in that time slot. Please try to make this time available if you are interested, and come THIS MONDAY for a brainstorming and planning session. There will be snacks :)
|
| October 9 |
Speaker: Richard Spjut, UCSB Abstract:
The card game Set was created in 1974 by Marsha Falco - then a population
geneticist working in Cambridge. She was using visual aids to study
combinations of mutations indicated as culprits for epilepsy in German
Shepherds. Replacing large amounts of similar data on file cards with
symbols, Marsha recognized certain patterns, which inspired the rules
of Set. She copyrighted the game in 1988, and while working at Michigan
State University began producing copies on a large scale in 1991. It
is now produced by Set Enterprises Inc., of Fountain Hills, AZ. The
card game is equivalent to finding triplets of elements of $F^4_3$ that
sum to zero, where $F^4_3$ is the direct product of four copies of the
finite field of order three. Using this representation of the game (hehe),
we will explore some questions such as, "what is the largest possible
number of cards that do not contain a 'set'?" This game inspires
interest in mathematics. Set is also fun to play. Someone else who finds
it entertaining and a useful instruction tool is Phyllis Chinn, who
graduated in 1969 from UCSB with a dissertation on Graph Isomorphisms.
Dr. Chinn has an Erd�s number of 1 from a paper concerning the bandwidth
of a graph and its complement. I am not a graph theorist nor algebraist
- and you don't have to be either to attend this lecture. I encourage
undergraduates to attend. |
| October 16 | Panel: Stephen
Bigelow, Alex Dugas, Jon McCammond, David Sherman, and Robin Wilson,
UCSB Abstract: The Hypatian Seminar this Monday will host a few of the faculty and post-docs who have been hired recently at UCSB. There will be discussion and advice on the process of applying for an academic position, both post-doc and tenure-track. Discussion leaders include Stephen Bigelow, Alex Dugas, Jon McCammond, David Sherman, and Robin Wilson. Bring your questions about the application process (or any advice you might have)! Contact Person: Liana
Dawson
|
| October 23 | Chaos and Seismology: An Introduction Abstract:
I will talk about the beauty of chaos in dynamical systems related to
weather and to earthquakes. Hopefully after this talk you will know
more about routes into chaos and properties of the attractors of chaotic
systems with respect to ergodicity, mixing and what makes an attractor
strange. I will discuss all these concepts via the research I'm doing
in the modeling of rock friction and earthquakes. This will be an introductory
sort of talk so I would love for you to attend and ask lots of questions. |
| October 30 | Panel:
Maria Isabel Bueno Cachadina, Hector Ceniceros, Daryl Cooper and Guofang Wei
Workshop
on Job Applications Abstract:
This weeks Hypatian Seminar will be a panel discussion on
writing CVs, research statements, and teaching statements. If you are
applying for academic jobs this year or are starting to think about
the application process, then this discussion is designed for you. Bring
your questions and don't be shy!
|
| November 6 | TBA Abstract:
|
| November 13 |
Speaker:
Brie Finegold, UCSB Abstract: In this talk I will link abstract topological
ideas to real-life problems. In particular, I'll describe the use
of homotopy groups in understanding defects in liquid crystals, and
the use of winding number in coordinating data from many robots. Braided
in will be a few mentions differential equations/dynamical systems.
|
| November 20 | Abstract: I will talk about the ropelength problem which asks
to minimize the length of a knotted curve subject to maintaining a largest
regular neighborhood around the knot. Using the existence of a special
line passing through the knot, we have that the ropelength of any nontrivial
knot is at least 15.66. This improves the previously known lower bound
of 12. I will try to give an idea of the proof of this fact based on
the paper of Elizabeth Denne, Yuanan Diao and John M. Sullivan ("Quadrisecants
Give New Lower Bounds for the Ropelength of a Knot").
|
| November 27 |
Panel: Liana Dawson and Allison Kolpas, UCSB Conference Reports Abstract:
We will be discussing job and post-doc information we learned
at conferences we attended this quarter. Allison Kolpas will be talking
about the "Negotiating the Ideal Faculty Position Workshop"
at Rice University. Liana Dawson will be discussing the "STEM Institute
for Postdoctorate Preparation" sponsored by Howard University and
the University of Texas, El Paso and the Society for Advancement of
Chicanos and Native Americans in Science National Conference.
|
| December 4 |
Moderator: Alethea Barbaro, UCSB Discussion of Annual Surveys Abstract:
We will discuss the 2005 Annual Survey in December's Notices. We will
also have old Annual Surveys which we can use for comparison. |
| Date |
Spring
2006 Schedule
|
| April 21 | 2005 Annual Survey of Mathematics Abstract: This Friday we will meet for lunch and discuss the recent Annual Survey which appeared in the February 2006 issue of Notices.
|
| May 5 |
Featured Speakers : Kelly Delp, Cal Poly SLO and Amber Rosin, Cal Poly Pomona Life after Graduate School Abstract: Alumnae Kelly Delp and Amber Rosin will tell us about their experiences since grad school and answer questions. It will be in a discussion format. This is a good opportunity for graduate students to come and hear what UCSB graduates have done since graduation and ask for advice from people who have searching for and found jobs in academia recently.
|
| May 19 |
Speaker : Alethea Barbaro, UCSB An Introduction to a Discrete Model of Fish Schooling and its Associated System of ODEs Abstract: In my research with Bjorn, I am trying
to model the schooling behavior of fish. This research is motivated
by a desire to track the annual migration of the capelin from the north
of Iceland to their feeding Speaker : Liana Dawson, UCSB Introduction to the KdV Equation Abstract: I will talk briefly about dispersive equations and the history of the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. Then we will derive a traveling wave solution for the KdV equation. |
| June 2 |
Featured Speakers: Mary Bucholtz and Jon McCammond, UCSB The Two Body Problem Abstract:
Mary Bucholtz and Jon McCammond will talk about the two body problem this
Friday from 1-2pm in the Hypatian Seminar. We meet in room 6617. It will
be a discussion format.
|
| Date |
Winter
2006 Schedule
|
| February 3 | Discussion Leader: Rena Hull, UCSB A Workshop on Giving Presentations Abstract: We will discuss using Latex and programs such as Xfig and Powerpoint to create presentations.
|
| February 17 | Discussion Leader: Alethea Barbaro, UCSB Teaching Methods Abstract: We will eat lunch together (in 4607) and have an informal discussion about teaching and other topics.
|
| March 10 |
Speaker: Allison Kolpas, UCSB Collective Motion in Organisms: Modeling and Computations Abstract: Fish, birds, honeybees, as well as many other animal groups, display collective behaviors such as schooling, flocking, and swarming. Behavioral rules can be established experimentally and so individual based models are used frequently when modeling aggregation in animal groups. We study a one-dimensional model of aggregation behavior which exhibits two stable collective states and explore the collective dynamics with both modeling and computation.
|
| Date |
Fall
2005 Schedule
|
| October 14 |
Speaker: Brie Finegold, UCSB Hypatia Abstract: I'll talk about Hypatia, one of the first female Greek Mathematicians (after whom we've named our seminar). We'll do a math problem from one of the works she edited. And you'll learn of her gruesome death. Plus, there will be some refreshments!
|
| October 28 |
Discussion Leaders: Alethea Barbaro and Rena Hull, UCSB Fostering Diversity in Graduate School Abstract: This weeks discussion will focus on encouraging women and minorities to both attend and finish graduate programs. |
| November 18 | Speaker: Rena Hull, UCSB The Life and Work of Mary Ellen Rudin Abstract: Mary Ellen Rudin is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is best known for her contributions to the field of set-theoretic topology. I will give a short biography of her life and present one of her famous counterexamples, a normal Hausdorff space whose cartesian product with the interval is not normal. |
| December 1 | Speaker: Helena McGahagan, UCSB Conservation Laws and Noether's Theorem Abstract: I will outline the life and some of the work of Emmy Noether, a German mathematician who was a professor at G�ttingen and later at Bryn Mawr and Princeton. Although perhaps better known for her later work in ring theory, Noether most important accomplishment in physics is a theoretical result relating symmetries to conservation principles. Taking the examples of the wave equation and the Schr�dinger equation, I will state some of the conservation laws, such as conservation of energy and momentum that must hold for these equations. Then I will demonstrate how Noether's theorem generates these laws from the symmetries of the equation. |