Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

By the well-known theorem of Brooks, every graph of maximum degree Δ ≥ 3 and clique number at most Δ has chromatic number at most Delta. It is natural to ask (and is the subject of a conjecture of Borodin and Kostochka) whether this bound can be improved for graphs of clique number at most Δ - 1. While there has been little progress on this conjecture, there is a number of interesting results on the analogous question for the fractional chromatic number. We will report on some of them, including a result by myself Bernard Lidický and Luke Postle that except for a finite number of counterexamples, every connected subcubic triangle-free graph has fractional chromatic number at most 11/4.

In this talk we will discuss epidemic modeling in the context of COVID-19.  We will review the basics of classical epidemic models, and present joint work with Maria Chikina on the use of age-targeted strategies in the context of a COVID-19-like epidemic.  We will also discuss the broader roles epidemic modeling has played over the past year, and the limitations it as presented as a primary lens through which to understand the pandemic.

We give a purely contact and symplectic geometric characterization of Anosov flows in dimension 3 and set up a framework to use tools from contact and symplectic geometry and topology in the study of questions about Anosov dynamics. If time permits, we will discuss a characterization of Anosovity based on Reeb flows and its consequences.

We prove a new upper bound of $s_r(K_k) = O(k^5 r^{5/2})$ on the Ramsey parameter $s_r(K_k)$ introduced by Burr, Erd\H{o}s and Lov\'{a}sz in 1976, which is defined as the smallest minimum degree of a graph $G$ such that any $r$-colouring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic $K_k$, whereas no proper subgraph of $G$ has this property. This improves the previous upper bound of $s_r(K_k) = O(k^6 r^3)$ proved by Fox et al. The construction used in our proof relies on a group theoretic model of generalised quadrangles introduced by Kantor in 1980.

Talk based on https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02474