Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

A new and exciting breakthrough due to Maynard establishes that there exist infinitely many pairs of distinct primes $p_1,p_2$ with $|p_1-p_2|\leq 600$ as a consequence of the Bombieri-Vinogradov Theorem. We apply his general method to the setting of Chebotarev sets of primes. We study applications of these bounded gaps with an emphasis on ranks of prime quadratic twists of elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$, congruence properties of the Fourier coefficients of normalized Hecke eigenforms, and representations of primes by binary quadratic forms.

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a potentially-fatal disease in which blood clots (i.e., emboli) break free from the deep veins in the body and migrate to the lungs. In order to prevent PE, anticoagulants are often prescribed; however, for some patients, anticoagulants cannot be used. For such patients, a mechanical filter, namely an inferior vena cava (IVC) filter, is inserted into the IVC to trap the blood clots and prevent them from reaching the lungs. There are numerous IVC filter designs, and it is not well understood which particular IVC filter geometry will result in the best treatment for a given patient. Patient-specific computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations may be used to predict the performance of IVC filters and hence can aid physicians in IVC filter selection and placement. In this talk, I will first describe our computational pipeline for prediction of IVC filter performance. Our pipeline involves several steps including image processing, geometric model construction, in vivo stress state estimation, surface and volume mesh generation based on virtual IVC filter placement, and CFD simulation of IVC hemodynamics. I will then present the results of our IVC hemodynamics simulations obtained for two patient IVCs. This talk represents joint work with several researchers at The Pennsylvania State University, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, the Penn State Applied Research Lab, and the University of Utah.

We study the structure of the stable coefficients of the Jones polynomial of an alternating link. We start by identifying the first four stable coefficients with polynomial invariants of a (reduced) Tait graph of the link projection. This leads us to introduce a free polynomial algebra of invariants of graphs whose elements give invariants of alternating links which strictly refine the first four stable coefficients. We conjecture that all stable coefficients are elements of this algebra, and give experimental evidence for the fifth and sixth stable coefficient. We illustrate our results in tables of all alternating links with at most 10 crossings and all irreducible planar graphs with at most 6 vertices.

Let G be an abelian group. A subset A of G is a Sidon set if A has the property that no sum of two elements of A is equal to another sum of two elements of A. These sets have a rich history in combinatorial number theory and frequently appear in the problem papers of Erdos. In this talk we will discuss some results in which Sidon sets were used to solve problems in extremal graph theory. This is joint work with Mike Tait and Jacques Verstraete.