Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The area was essentially originated by the general question: How many zeros of a random polynomials are real? Kac showed that the expected number of real zeros for a polynomial with i.i.d. Gaussian coefficients is logarithmic in terms of the degree. Later, it was found that most of zeros of random polynomials are asymptotically uniformly distributed near the unit circumference (with probability one) under mild assumptions on the coefficients. Thus two main directions of research are related to the almost sure limits of the zero counting measures, and to the quantitative results on the expected number of zeros in various sets. We give estimates of the expected discrepancy between the zero counting measure and the normalized arclength on the unit circle. Similar results are established for polynomials with random coefficients spanned by various bases, e.g., by orthogonal polynomials. We show almost sure convergence of the zero counting measures to the corresponding equilibrium measures for associated sets in the plane, and quantify this convergence. Random coefficients may be dependent and need not have identical distributions in our results.

Given some class of "geometric spaces", we can make a ring as follows. (i) (additive structure) When U is an open subset of such a space X, [X] = [U] + [(X \ U)] (ii) (multiplicative structure) [X x Y] = [X] [Y].In the algebraic setting, this ring (the "Grothendieck ring of varieties") contains surprising structure, connecting geometry to arithmetic and topology. I will discuss some remarkable statements about this ring (both known and conjectural), and present new statements (again, both known and conjectural). A motivating example will be polynomials in one variable. (This talk is intended for a broad audience.) This is joint work with Melanie Matchett Wood.

In this age of high-dimensional data, many challenging questions take the following shape: can you check whether the data has a certain desired property by checking that property for many, but low-dimensional data fragments? In recent years, such questions have inspired new, exciting research in algebra, especially relevant when the property is highly symmetric and expressible through systems of polynomial equations. I will discuss three concrete questions of this kind that we have settled in the affirmative: Gaussian factor analysis from an algebraic perspective, high-dimensional tensors of bounded rank, and higher secant varieties of Grassmannians. The theory developed for these examples deals with group actions on infinite-dimensional algebraic varieties, and applies to problems from many areas. In particular, I will sketch its (potential) relation to the fantastic Matroid Minor Theorem.

An introduction for non-experts on real and finite Euler sums, also known as multiple zeta values.