## Computing Skills Workshop for new grad students

Computational skills workshop for new graduate students at U of T

Date:  November 7-8, 2011.
Times: 9:00 to 4:00 both days (8:30 registration on Monday)
Venue: Woodsworth 120 and 121
Limit: 40 students

Software Carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org) has been teaching
scientists and engineers the concepts, skills, and tools they need to
use and build software more productively since 1997.  This year, we
will run an intensive two-day workshop for new graduate students at
the University of Toronto during the fall mid-term break.  Topics to
be covered include:

* the Unix shell
* version control
* basic programming in Python
* using databases with SQL
* how to test software
* and one other topic to be chosen by students' votes

Participation is free, but as we only have 40 spaces, please register
early at http://swcbootcamp2011.eventbrite.com/.  If you later find
that you are unable to attend, please take a moment to remove yourself
from the list so that someone else can take your place.

or Dr. Greg Wilson (gvwilson@cs.utoronto.ca).

# YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN TO RECEIVE PRESTIGIOUS AWARD

Youness Lamzouri to Receive 2011 CMS Doctoral Prize

Youness Lamzouri

OTTAWA, Ontario — The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to announce that Youness Lamzouri is the recipient of the 2011 Doctoral Prize. The CMS Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student. Lamzouri will receive his award and present a plenary lecture at the 2011 CMS Winter Meeting in Toronto.

“Students pursuing a doctorate in mathematics are crucial to the growth and development of mathematics in Canada as well as to discovery and advancement in the fields of science and technology,” said Jacques Hurtubise, President of the CMS. “Youness Lamzouri has made considerable contributions to mathematics through his doctoral research and is highly deserving of this prize.”

“Youness Lamzouri emerges from his doctoral studies as a fully fledged mathematician,” said Andrew Granville (University of Montreal), Lamzouri’s PhD thesis supervisor. “He is a strong researcher, a very good writer of mathematics, and a clear effective teacher and lecturer who is popular with students at different levels.”

Lamzouri’s research is in the area of analytic number theory. His thesis provides a first good understanding of extreme values of the Riemann zeta-function (and of all -functions) at the edge of the critical strip, an area involved in some of the most difficult and central problems in analytic number theory.

“There was already a good understanding of the distribution of in its full range, as varies, but Lamzouri was able to give some idea of the distribution of in the same range, showing that it is more dense near the real axis than had perhaps been expected,” said Granville.

Another striking aspect of Lamzouri’s thesis work is his use of analytic techniques to understand questions on diophantine approximation (and thus settle a dispute as to the basis of the Lang-Waldschmidt conjecture on the limit of linear forms in logarithms); and in using diophantine approximation techniques (the Lang-Waldschmidt conjecture) to greatly extend the range of Fourier analysis involving ‘s.

Youness Lamzouri obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University of Montreal in 2009. After graduation, he obtained an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship, and participated in the 2009-2010 special year on Analytic Number Theory at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was the recipient of the 2004 Jean-Maranda Award for the best finishing undergraduate student in mathematics from the University of Montreal, and the 2006 Carl Herz Prize from the Institut des sciences mathématiques (ISM). Youness is currently a J. L. Doob Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

 Laura Alyea Communications and Special Projects Officer Canadian Mathematical Society (613) 733-2662 ext. 728 commsp@cms.math.ca or Dr. David Brydges, Chair CMS Research Committee Department of Mathematics University of British Columbia (604) 822-3620 chair-resc@cms.math.ca

## Atmospheric Physics Seminar

Hello everyone,

Professor Marek Stastna from University of Waterloo
will be visiting the Atmospheric Physics Group at the physics department
next week and will be the first of the Atmospheric physics Noble seminar
series this year.
Professor Stastna's talk will be next Monday (September 19) at 4 pm in
Mp609 (see below for more info) and we would like to invite you to attend
this seminar.
Coffee,tee and cookies will be served on Monday at 3:50 in the
coffee/printer room on the sixth floor.

Best,
Ali Mashayek (on behalf of the Atmospheric Physics Noble Committee)

http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/research/atmospheric-physics/atmosp-monday-seminars/internal-gravity-waves
http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mmstastn/Welcome.html

Title and abstract:The benefits of high order methods for simulating
internal wave dynamics: from the lake scale to bottom boundary layer
interactions

The presence of a stable density stratification is the fundamental
property of both the atmosphere and natural bodies of water on scales
ranging from those associated with small-scale turbulence to those large
enough so as to be affected by the Earth's rotation.  In this talk I will
discuss the numerical simulation of stratified fluid dynamics with a focus
on internal wave processes.  I will describe the benefits of high-order
methods, both for purely numerical simulation and for instances where it
is coupled with semi-analytical theory to derive new results.  In
particular I will discuss fully nonlinear trapped waves over topography,
the instability of the bottom boundary layer beneath internal solitary
waves and the weakly  non-hydrostatic dynamics of small to mid-sized lakes
such as those  typically found on the Canadian Shield.  Throughout, I will
introduce  the necessary technical vocabulary and will attempt to explain
the reasons for the various mathematical developments.

## SGS Student Award Workshop for 2011

SGS Student Award Workshops for 2011

Workshops are offered in September by SGS Awards Officers for students
interested in applying for Federal and Provincial scholarships/fellowships
and are highly recommended. Federal Programs (NSERC & SSHRC) require
however OGS does offer a limited number of scholarships to
international students.

Videos, webinars and student resource centers may also be available
on the respective agency's website.

St. George Campus: Friday, September 16, 2011
NSERC & OGS: 10:00-12:00pm
Location: Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street
Room: 2135 Amphitheater

## MAT 1312H – Hamiltonian Group Actions

Please be advised that Lisa Jeffrey's graduate course,
MAT 1312H - Hamiltonian Group Actions, has been moved to the
second semester. Scheduling will be decided later.

## Tobermory 2011

Hello,

This message is about organizing this year's trip to
Tobermory.

For those who are new to it:

Since the early seventies of the last century, members of the
department, their families, friends, visitors... go to Tobermory,
on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, at the end of September.
We go there Friday afternoon/evening, hike all Saturday
along the Bruce trail that follows the Niagara escarpment,
stretching all the way from Niagara to Tobermory, go to the beach or
"cliff climbing" (an eternal favourite with the kids!) on
Sunday morning, and then head back to Toronto, with the
possibility of dinner on the way.

It is a great way to get some fresh air after the first few
weeks of classes and to enjoy the early fall.
Sturdy shoes and rain gear (depending on the forecast)
are recommended. There are limited possibilities to buy
supplies in Tobermory, so you may wish to bring water
and food for the hike with you.

For those who would rather not hike the whole day, there
are several alternatives to do just parts of the hike.

Keeping with tradition, I suggest we go the weekend of
Sept. 30 -  Oct. 2. I'm willing to make the hotel reservations,
so let me know by Thursday, Sept. 22, that you can come and
how many rooms/beds you will need, whether you are prepared
or wish to share a room;
you can also make your own reservations directly via internet. The
webpage for the hotel that we have been using is at:
http://www.coachhouseinnresort.com/
or you may have any preferences for a particular motel from
previous years.

Just let me know that you are coming, who you are bringing
with you, and whether you have room in your car to bring
others;  also if you need a ride to get there (and back).
(In the past, some people have shared a car rental
for the weekend.)

Hope to see you on the Bruce trail.

John
(bland@math.toronto.edu)

## Upcoming Orientation Sessions

Please note the upcoming orientation sessions:

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
starts at 8:45 am and ends around 4:00 pm
Participation required RSVP

Friday, September 9th, 2011, 2-4 pm
MATH DEPARTMENT ORIENTATION SESSION
session starts in MP 103, McLennan Physical Labs, 60 St. George St.
Mandatory attendance for all St. George T.A.'s

Monday, September 12th, 2011, 4-6 pm,
in BA 6183, 40 St. George St.

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011, 5-6 pm,
in BA 6183, 40 St. George St.
MEET WITH A MEMBER OF THE BARGAINING SUPPORT COMMITTEE
for CUPE 3902, your TA union

## Master’s Thesis Presentation – Janet Li

Friday, August 19, 2011, 2:10 p.m., in BA 6183,
40 St. George Street

ON THE LOGARITHIMIC CALCULUS AND SIDORENKO's CONJECTURE

Janet Li

Joint work with Balazs Szegedy.
We study a type of calculus for proving inequalities between
subgraph densities which is based on Jensen's inequality for
the logarithmic function. As a demonstration of the method we verify
the conjecture of ErdÂ¨os-Simonovits and Sidorenko for new families
of graphs. In particular we give a short analytic proof for a
result by Conlon, Fox and Sudakov.

## Public Lecture / PhD Thesis Presentation – Zsuzsanna Dancso

MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011, 1:00 P.M.

IN BA 6183, 40 ST. GEORGE STREET

PHD CANDIDATE:  ZSUZSANNA DANCSO

A UNIVERSAL FINITE TYPE INVARIANT OF KNOTTED TRIVALENT GRAPHS

Knot theory is not generally considered an algebraic subject, due to the fact that knots don’t have much algebraic structure: there are a few operations defined on them (such as connected sum and cabling), but these don’t nearly make the space of knots finitely generated. In this thesis, following an idea of Dror Bar-Natan’s, we develop an algebraic setting for knot theory by considering the larger, richer space of knotted trivalent graphs (KTGs), which includes knots and links. KTGs along with standard operations defined on them form a finitely generated algebraic structure, in which many topological knot properties are definable using simple formulas. Thus, a homomorphic invariant of KTGs provides an algebraic way to study knots.

We present a construction for such an invariant. The starting point is extending the Kontsevich integral of knots to KTGs. This was first done in a series of papers by Le, Murakami, Murakami and Ohtsuki in the late 90’s using the theory of associators. We present an elementary construction building on Kontsevich’s original definition, and discuss the homomorphicity properties of the resulting invariant, which turns out to be homomorphic with respect to almost all of the KTG operations except for edge unzip. Unfortunately, edge unzip is crucial for finite generation, and we prove that in fact no universal finite type invariant of KTGs can intertwine all the standard operations at once. To fix this, we present an alternative construction of the space of KTGs on which a homomorphic universal finite type invariant exists. This space retains all the good properties of the original KTGs: it is finitely generated, includes knots, and is closely related to Drinfel’d associators.

The thesis is based on two articles, one published and one pre-print, the second one joint with Dror Bar-Natan.

## Fields Undergraduate Network (FUN) Upcoming Events

July 22, 2011 - DISCRETE MATHEMATICS at Carleton University
Organizers: David Thomson (Carleton), Michelle Kovesi (Carleton, and
Richard Cerezo (Fields)

August 19, 2011 - STUDENT PRESENTATIONS FROM FIELDS-MITACS SUMMER
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROGRAM at the Fields Institute
Organizers: University of Toronto Math Union, UTM Mathematics and
Computer Science Society

September 2011 - KNOT THEORY at the University of Waterloo
Organizer: University of Waterloo Pure Math Club

October 28-30, 2011 - RISK FORUM at the University of Toronto
Organizers: University of Toronto, University of Waterloo,
Ryerson University. More TBA

November 2011 - ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY at Queen's University
Organizer: Queen's University Math Student Council

December 10-12, 2011 - 2011 CMS WINTER MEETING at the Delta Chelsea
Hotel, Downtown Toronto
Organizers: FUN Executive Team, CMS Student Committee

January 2012 - SEMINARS IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS IN MONTREAL
Organizer: Seminars in Undergraduate Mathematics in Montreal Executive Team

or email Richard Cerezo at rcerezo@fields.utoronto.ca