Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In Multiview Geometry, a field of Computer Vision one is interested in reconstructing 3-dimensional scenes from 2-dimensional images. I will review the basic concepts in this area from an algebraic viewpoint, in particular I'll discuss epipolar geometry, fundamental matrices, and trifocal and quadrifocal tensors. I'll also highlight some in open problems about the algebraic geometry that arise.This will be an introductory talk, and only a background in basic linear algebra should be necessary to follow.

Progress in systems biology relies on the use of mathematical and statistical models for system level studies of biological processes. This talk will focus on discrete models of gene regulatory networks and the challenges they present, in particular data selection and model stability. Careful data selection is important for model identification since the process is sensitive to the amount and type of data used as input. We will discuss a criterion for deciding when a set of data points identifies an algebraic model with special minimality properties. Stability is another important requirement for models of gene regulatory networks. Canalizing functions, a particular class of Boolean functions, show stable dynamic behavior and are thus suitable for expressing gene regulatory relationships. However, in practice, relaxing the canalizing requirement on some variables is appropriate. We will present the class of partially nested canalizing functions and some of their properties and applications.