## Seminars and Colloquia by Series

### Geometry and complexity of partition bijections

Series
School of Mathematics Colloquium
Time
Thursday, February 26, 2009 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Igor PakUniversity of Minnesota
The study of partition identities has a long history going back to Euler, with applications ranging from Analysis to Number Theory, from Enumerative Combina- torics to Probability. Partition bijections is a combinatorial approach which often gives the shortest and the most elegant proofs of these identities. These bijections are then often used to generalize the identities, find "hidden symmetries", etc. In the talk I will present a modern approach to partition bijections based on the geometry of random partitions and complexity ideas.

### The Geometry of Logconcave Functions

Series
ACO Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - 13:30 for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
In this talk, I will introduce the class of logconcave and s-concave functions, illustrate their properties, and explain their connections to convex geometry. I will present a simple and unified approach for proving probabilistic inequalities for logconcave and s-concave densities on the real line. Lastly I will use these techniques to prove two important theorems in convex geometry: Grunbaum's theorem, every halfspace cut through the centroid of a convex body contains at least a 1/e volume fraction of the body, and the Milman-Pajor inequality, a convex body in R^n is sandwiched between its inertial ellipsoid and a factor n scaling of it. Joint work with Santosh Vempala.

### Quantum Statistical Mechanics, graphs and determinants

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - 12:00 for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Federico BonettoSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
I'll give a brief introduction to the to Quantum Statistical Mechanics in the case of systems of Fermions (e.g. electrons) and try to show that a lot of the mathematical problems can be framed in term of counting (Feynman) graphs or estimating large determinants.

### Nonlinear effect of copy number variation on gene expression

Series
Mathematical Biology Seminar
Time
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Yuriy MileykoSchool of Biology, Georgia Tech
The expression dynamics of interacting genes depends on the topology of the regulatory network, the quantitative nature of feedbacks and interactions between DNA, RNA and proteins, and the biochemical state of the intracellular and surrounding environment. In this talk we show that dynamics of a gene regulatory network can also depend sensitively on the copy number of genes and promoters. Genetic regulatory networks include an overrepresentation of subgraphs commonly known as network motifs. We consider positive feedback, bistable feedback, and toggle switch motifs and show that variation in gene copy number can cause a sequence of saddle-node bifurcations in the corresponding differential equations models, which leads to multiple orders of magnitude change in gene expression. A similar analysis of a 3-gene motif with successive inhibition (the repressilator'') reveals that changes in gene copy number can also cause a Hopf bifurcation, thus leading to a qualitative switch in system behavior among oscillatory and equilibrium dynamics. Importantly, we show that these bifurcations exist over a wide range of parameter values, thus reinforcing our claim that copy number is a key control parameter in the expression dynamics of regulatory networks.

### Burgers turbulence, Chernoff's distribution, complete integrability and stochastic coalescence

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - 15:05 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Govind MenonBrown University
The problem of understanding the parabolic hull of Brownian motion arises in two different fields. In mathematical physics this is the Burgers-Hopf caricature of turbulence (very interesting, even if not entirely turbulent). In statistics, the limit distribution we study was first considered by Chernoff, and forms the cornerstone of a large class of limit theorems that have now come to be called 'cube-root-asymptotics'. It was in the statistical context that the problem was first solved completely in the mid-80s by Groeneboom in a tour de force of hard analysis. We consider another approach to his solution motivated by recent work on stochastic coalescence (especially work of Duchon, Bertoin, and my joint work with Bob Pego). The virtues of this approach are simplicity, generality, and the appearance of a completely unexpected Lax pair. If time permits, I will also indicate some tantalizing links of this approach with random matrices. This work forms part of my student Ravi Srinivasan's dissertation.

### Stability of collisionless plasmas

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Monday, February 23, 2009 - 16:30 for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Zhiwu LinSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
A plasma is a completed ionized gas. In many applications such as in nuclear fusion or astrophysical phenomena, the plasma has very high temperature and low density, thus collisions can be ignored. The standard kinetic models for a collisionless plasma are the Vlasov- Maxwell and Vlasov-Poisson systems. The Vlasov-Poisson system is also used to model galaxy dynamics, where a star plays the role of a particle. There exists infinitely many equilibria for Vlasov models and their stability is a very important issue in physics. I will describe some of my works on stability and instability of various Vlasov equilibria.

### Elliptic hypergeometric integrals

Series
Analysis Seminar
Time
Monday, February 23, 2009 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Eric RainsCaltech
Euler's beta (and gamma) integral and the associated orthogonal polynomials lie at the core of much of the theory of special functions, and many generalizations have been studied, including multivariate analogues (the Selberg integral; also work of Dixon and Varchenko), q-analogues (Askey-Wilson, Nasrallah-Rahman), and both (work of Milne-Lilly and Gustafson; Macdonald and Koornwinder for orthgonal polynomials). (Among these are the more tractable sums arising in random matrices/tilings/etc.) In 2000, van Diejen and Spiridonov conjectured a further generalization of the Selberg integral, going beyond $q$ to the elliptic level (replacing q by a point on an elliptic curve). I'll discuss two proofs of their conjecture, and the corresponding elliptic analogue of the Macdonald and Koornwinder orthogonal polynomials. In addition, I'll discuss a further generalization of the elliptic Selberg integral with a (partial) symmetry under the exceptional Weyl group E_8, and its relation to Sakai's elliptic Painlev equation.

### The mathematical understanding of tau-leaping algorithm

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, February 23, 2009 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Tiejun LiPeking University
The tau-leaping algorithm is proposed by D.T. Gillespie in 2001 for accelerating the simulation for chemical reaction systems. It is faster than the traditional stochastic simulation algorithm (SSA), which is an exact simulation algorithm. In this lecture, I will overview some recent mathematical results on tau-leaping done by our group, which include the rigorous analysis, construction of the new algorithm, and the systematic analysis of the error.

### Cubic graphs and number fields

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, February 23, 2009 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Stavros GaroufalidisSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
A cubic graph is a graph with all vertices of valency 3. We will show how to assign two numerical invariants to a cubic graph: its spectral radius, and a number field. These invariants appear in asymptotics of classical spin networks, and are notoriously hard to compute. They are known for the Theta graph, the Tetrahedron, but already unknown for the Cube and the K_{3,3} graph. This is joint work with Roland van der Veen: arXiv:0902.3113.

### Introduction to metric and comparison geometry

Series
Other Talks
Time
Friday, February 20, 2009 - 15:00 for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Igor BelegradekSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
Comparison geometry studies Riemannian manifolds with a given curvature bound. This minicourse is an introduction to volume comparison (as developed by Bishop and Gromov), which is fundamental in understanding manifolds with a lower bound on Ricci curvature. Prerequisites are very modest: we only need basics of Riemannian geometry, and fluency with fundamental groups and metric spaces. The second (2 hour) lecture is about Gromov-Hausdorff convergence, which provides a natural framework to studying degenerations of Riemannian metrics.