------ Forwarded Message
From: Alison Conway <aconway@fields.utoronto.ca>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:28:17 -0400
To: <mwwong@mathstat.yorku.ca>
Cc: Pamela Brittain <pamb@math.utoronto.ca>
Subject: 2010 Fields Medallist CEDRIC VILLANI Public Lecture November 1
Dear Professors Murty and Wong,
Fields will be hosting Cedric Villani's visit to Toronto including a Public
Lecture on November 1. As his lecture may be of great interest to your
students would you please forward the announcement below to your colleagues
and students
Please note that as space is limited attendees must register in advance.
With thanks,
Alison
==============================
ANNOUNCEMENT
2010 Fields Medallist, CEDRIC VILLANI will be presenting a Public Lecture
Monday, November 1, 2010 at 5:00 p.m. 'What is the fate of the solar system?
'
Admission is free, but on-line registration is required at
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/villani
Registration will be open October 26 but will close once room capacity has
been reached. After on-line registration, you should pick up your tickets
**before 4:45 p.m.** on November 1, Room 1160, Bahen Centre, 40 St. George
Street.
Please note that seating is not reserved.
======================================
Alison E. Conway | Manager of Scientific Programs
FIELDS INSTITUTE | 222 College St, Toronto, M5T 3J1
=====================================
announcement, event
The Math Union at the University of Toronto invites you to a panel
discussion on mathematical finance. Guests include Prof. Alan White of
Rotman, Prof. Sebastian Jaimungal from the Dept. of Statistics, Prof. Yuri
Lawryshyn from the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Chad McAlpine, VP of
Quantitative Research at RBC.
No prior experience is needed as we will be focusing on broad topics in the
industry. Whether you are looking for career advice or trade advice, the
experts are sure to have an opinion. Come ready with your questions!
Please RSVP on our Facebook page - Math Union Colloquium - Mathematical
Finance
Also see the poster in the link below:
https://sites.google.com/site/mutoronto/fall-2010-colloquium/FinancePoster.pdf
Date- Friday, October 22
Time- 4:30pm
Place- BA1130
Refreshments will be provided
announcement, event
FREE PUBLIC LECTURE
"STATISTICS IN THE HEADLINES"
by Jeffrey Rosenthal (http://probability.ca/jeff/aboutJSR.html)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 4:00-5:30 pm
Room 2117, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St George Street, Toronto
Statistics and probability have appeared in major news stories with
greater and greater frequency. Recent examples include heated political
debates about whether violent crime is increasing, opinion polls about the
upcoming mayoral election, the spike in Toronto pedestrian deaths last
January, fascination with the odds of winning huge Lotto Max jackpots,
unexpected outrage about excessive lottery "insider wins", a recent
television documentary about mysterious coincidences, and the surprisingly
high-profile summer controversy about cancelling the long-form census.
This talk will consider such questions and controversies from the
perspective of a statistics professor who conducted numerous media
interviews upon the success of his general-interest book "Struck by
Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities".
This event is presented in conjunction with the United Nation's designated
"World Statistics Day" (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/wsd/).
Absolutely no mathematics or statistics background is required to attend.
event
As a part of the (unofficial) graduate orientation, you are all invited to
MGSA (Math Graduate Student Association)'s Beginning-of-Year Social event!
To break the pub-going tradition (as some students are not completely
comfortable in pubs) and to enjoy the last bit of summer, we will have an
outdoor picnic dinner at High Park this time (weather permitting). :-)
[In case of sun and very light rain, we will head to High Park from the
department together. You can do any of the park activities you like
(bring your own equipment, e.g. frisbees, balls), picnic lunch, then more
exploring.]
MEETING PLACE: Math Lounge (Bahen 6th Floor, circular area)
MEETING TIME: Thursday, September 9 at 3:30pm (will wait for 15 minutes)
ESTIMATED EVENT RUNNING TIME: 3:30-8pm (before it gets dark out)
LURING FACTORS (besides being in good company): All attendants who are
members of the department will receive a $5 food/drink cash subsidy. But
you are responsible for bring or buying (from the restaurant at High Park)
your own dinner (and drink). A variety of natural juices will be
provided.
TRANSPORTATION: We will use the TTC, and maybe try to take advantage of
one of their group discounts.
ABOUT THE PARK: www.highparktoronto.com. High Park is a large park and
one of those places in Toronto you must know and visit if you live here.
The earlier you find out about it, the better!
[In case of heavy rain, we will play games and chat at the department from
3:30-5:30pm, and then head over to dinner together, and hopefully a kind
and powerful restaurant will have pity on us. (I'll try to make
reservation on the day. Our worst enemy and loyal friend will be pizza.)]
MEETING PLACE: same.
MEETING TIME: same.
ESTIMATED EVENT RUNNING TIME: same.
LURING FACTORS: same ... or maybe $5/person-equivalent subsidy depending
on format of food.
TRANSPORTATION: simplified.
ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT: www.math.utoronto.ca
If you have questions about this event, feel free to email me at
lzhang@math.utoronto.ca.
Please come and mingle with each other, and get to meet the new students
first hand! New faces are most welcome! Feel free to bring your
partner(s) and kids (if you have any).
Looking forward to meeting/seeing everyone!
Lucy
on behalf of the MGSA
announcement, event, MGSA
A delegation from the City University of Hong Kong
(http://www.cityu.edu.khk) will be visiting
the University of Toronto next week and they are interested in
recruiting potential faculty members. For this purpose, a reception
will be held on
11 June 2010 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm at
InterContinental Toronto Yorkville
to present the vision of
City University of Hong Kong and to meet with potential candidates.
For registration, please e-mail: hrayg@cityu.edu.hk
You are welcome to meet the delegation by making an appointment
via e-mail at: hrayg@cityu.edu.hk
event, Job Opportunity, RSVP
OTTAWA MATHEMATICS CONFERENCE
for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS:
It is a great pleasure to invite graduate students, postdoctoral
researchers, and senior undergraduate researchers to participate in the
Third Annual OTTAWA MATHEMATICS CONFERENCE (OMC).
The OMC is a 2-day student-organized conference to be held June 18 and
19, 2010 at the University of Ottawa. The purpose of the OMC is to
provide a venue for participants to showcase their original research in a
20-25 minute presentation from all areas of mathematics and
statistics. There will also be two invited speakers from Ottawa
universities.
PARTICIPANTS:
Graduate students, postdoctoral and senior undergraduate researchers of
mathematics from universities across Ontario and Quebec and other
universities throughout North America.
REGISTRATION:
No registration fee; interested participants should e-mail Jacob
Chodoriwsky at jchod079@uOttawa.ca with the following information by
Monday, June 7:
Name
Institution
Contact Information
Major Area of Research
Would you be interested in giving a talk?
If interested in giving a talk, please submit a preliminary title and
abstract to jchod079@uOttawa.ca by June 7. Deadline for final abstracts
is Monday, June 14. Abstracts may be submitted as plain text in your
e-mail, or as an attachment in TeX or pdf format.
Refreshments will be provided, and a complimentary lunch will be served
on June 18th. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide financial support
for travel and accommodation. However, out-of-town participants and
presenters are very welcome.
The OMC organizers gratefully acknowledge support from the Department of
Mathematics and Statistics, the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral
Studies, and the Math Grad Students??? Association of the University of
Ottawa.
Faculty members: Please encourage your graduate students and post-docs
to participate!
Looking forward to meeting you at the Third Annual Ottawa Mathematics
Sincereley,
OMC 2010 Organizing Committee
deadline, event
"Navigating Your PATH: Exploring and Supporting Teaching Assistant and
Graduate Student Development"
June 21st - 22nd, 2010
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://www.teaching.utoronto.ca/conference2010
REGISTRATION DEADLINE - EXTENDED: June 1st, 2010.
Navigating Your PATH represents a culmination of growing interest in Canada
and the United States in the development of professional skills in graduate
students, including the training provided to teaching assistants. No such
national conference focusing on the combination of TA training and skills
development in graduate students has ever taken place in Canada. Through
papers, workshops, panels and poster presentations conference participants
will examine how we prepare graduate students for teaching, curriculum
planning, research, publishing, grant-seeking, report-writing, public
speaking and community service. This conference will bring together
education researchers, educational developers, faculty members,
administrators, independent scholars, graduate students, librarians and
student life professionals to explore graduate student development.
REGISTRATION: $150
STUDENT: $75
If you have any questions regarding this conference, please contact:
ctsi.conference2010@utoronto.ca.
career, deadline, event
The Department of Mathematics will be participating in the
3rd annual Science Rendezvous this Saturday, May 8th from
11 am - 5 pm. The event is a celebration of science and
follows a festival format to bring science education and
UofT research to the general public. More information on the
event can be found at http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/uoft/ .
The event is free and open to all members of the public.
event
Everyone is welcome. Coffee will be served in
Math Lounge before the exam.
Departmental PhD Thesis Exam
----------------------------
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 1:10 p.m.,
in BA 6183, 40 St. George Street
PhD Candidate: Mikhail Mazin
PhD Advisor: Askold Khovanskii
Thesis Title: Geometric Theory of Parshin Residues.
(http://www.math.utoronto.ca/mmazin/thesis.pdf)
Thesis Abstract:
In the early 70's Parshin introduced his notion of the
multidimensional residues of meromorphic top-forms on
algebraic varieties. Parshin's theory is a generalization
of the classical one-dimensional residue theory. The main
difference between the Parshin's definition and the
one-dimensional case is that in higher dimensions one computes the
residue not at a point but at a complete flag of irreducible
subvarieties X=X_n\supset ... \supset X_0, dim(X_k)=k.
Parshin, Beilinson, and Lomadze also proved the Reciprocity Law
for residues: if one fixes all elements of the flag, except
for X_k, where 0<k<n, and consider all possible choices of X_k, then
only finitely many of these choices give non-zero residues, and
the sum of these residues is zero.
Parshin's constructions are completely algebraic. In fact, they
work in very general settings, not only over complex numbers.
However, in the complex case one would expect a more geometric
variant of the theory.
In my thesis I study Parshin residues from the geometric point of
view. In particular, the residue is expressed in terms of the
integral over a smooth cycle. Parshin-Lomadze Reciprocity Law for
residues in the complex case is proved via a homological relation on
these cycles.
The thesis consists of two parts. In the first part the theory of
Leray coboundary operators for stratified spaces is developed.
These operators are used to construct the cycle and prove the
homological relation. In the second part resolution of singularities
techniques are applied to study the local geometry near a
complete flag of subvarieties.
event, Exam PhD
Date and Time: Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 11:10 a.m., in BA 6183, 40 St. George Street
PhD Candidate: Jana Archibald
PhD Advisor: Dror Bar-Natan
Thesis Title: The Multivariable Alexander Polynomial on Tangles
(http://www.math.toronto.edu/jfa/jana_thesis.pdf)
Thesis Abstract:
The multivariable Alexander polynomial (MVA) is a classical invariant
of knots and links. We give an extension to regular virtual knots which
has simple versions of many of the relations known to hold for the
classical invariant.
By following the previous proofs that the MVA is of finite type we
give a new definition for its weight system which can be computed as
the determinant of a matrix created from local information. This is an
improvement on previous definitions as it is directly computable (not
defined recursively) and is computable in polynomial time. We also
show that our extension to virtual knots is a finite type invariant of
virtual knots.
We further explore how the multivariable Alexander polynomial takes
local information and packages it together to form a global knot
invariant, which leads us to an extension to tangles. To define this
invariant we use so-called circuit algebras, an extension of planar
algebras which are the `right’ setting to discuss virtual knots. Our
tangle invariant is a circuit algebra morphism, and so behaves well
under tangle operations and gives yet another definition for the
Alexander polynomial. The MVA and the single variable Alexander
polynomial are known to satisfy a number of relations, each of which
has a proof relying on different approaches and techniques. Using our
invariant we can give simple computational proofs of many of these
relations, as well as an alternate proof that the MVA and our virtual
extension are of finite type.
event, Exam PhD