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Homological algebra is a curious branch of mathematics; it is a powerful tool which has been used in many diverse places, without any clear understanding why it should be so useful. We will give a list of applications, proceeding chronologically: first to topology, then to complex analysis, then to algebraic geometry, then to commutative algebra and finally (if we have time) to non-commutative algebra. At the end of the talk I hope to be able to say something about the part of homological algebra on which I have worked, and its applications. That part is derived categories.

Recent studies (1) have indicated problems with our ability to use the genetic distances between species to estimate the time since their divergence (so called molecular clocks). An exponential decay curve has been detected in comparisons of closely related taxa in mammal and bird groups, and rough approximations suggest that molecular clock calculations may be problematic for the recent past (eg <1 million years). Unfortunately, this period encompasses a number of key evolutionary events where estimates of timing are critical such as modern human evolutionary history, the domestication of animals and plants, and most issues involved in conservation biology. A solution (formulated at UA) will be briefly outlined. A second area of active interest is the recent suggestion (2) that mitochondrial DNA diversity does not track population size in several groups, in contrast to standard thinking. This finding has been interpreted as showing that mtDNA may not be evolving neutrally, as has long been assumed.
Large ancient DNA datasets provide a means to examine these issues, by revealing evolutionary processes in real time (3). The data also provide a rich area for mathematical investigation as temporal information provides information about several parameters that are unknown in serial coalescent calculations (4).
References:

1. Ho SYW et al. Time dependency of molecular rate estimates and systematic overestimation of recent divergence times. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1561-1568 (2005);
   Penny D, Nature 436, 183-184 (2005).
2. Bazin E., et al. Population size does not influence mitochondrial genetic diversity in animals. Science 312, 570 (2006);
   Eyre-Walker A. Size does not matter for mitochondrial DNA, Science 312, 537 (2006).
3. Shapiro B, et al. Rise and fall of the Beringian steppe bison. Science 306: 1561-1565 (2004);
   Chan et al. Bayesian estimation of the timing and severity of a population bottleneck from ancient DNA. PLoS Genetics, 2 e59 (2006).
4. Drummond et al. Measurably evolving populations, Trends in Ecol. Evol. 18, 481-488 (2003);
   Drummond et al. Bayesian coalescent inference of past population dynamics from molecular sequences. Molecular Biology Evolution 22, 1185-92 (2005).

Data in the form of paired (pre-treatment, post-treatment) counts arise in the study of the effects of several treatments after accounting for possible covariate effects. An example of such a data set comes from a dental epidemiological study in Belo Horizonte (the Belo Horizonte caries prevention study) which evaluated various programmes for reducing caries. Also, these data may show extra pairs of zeros than can be accounted for by a simpler model, such as, a bivariate Poisson regression model. In such situations we propose to use a zero-inflated bivariate Poisson regression (ZIBPR) model for the paired (pre-treatment, posttreatment) count data. We develop EM algorithm to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the ZIBPR model. Further, we obtain exact Fisher information matrix of the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the ZIBPR model and develop a procedure for testing treatment effects. The procedure to detect treatment effects based on the ZIBPR model is compared, in terms of size, by simulations, with an earlier procedure using a zero-inflated Poisson regression (ZIPR) model of the post-treatment count with the pre-treatment count treated as a covariate. The procedure based on the ZIBPR model holds level most effectively. A further simulation study indicates good power property of the procedure based on the ZIBPR model. We then compare our analysis, of the decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) index data from the caries prevention study, based on the ZIBPR model with the analysis using a zero-inflated Poisson regression model in which the pre-treatment DMFT index is taken to be a covariate

Collapsing bridges and exploding rockets have been associated with vibrations in resonance with natural frequencies. As well, the stability of the solar system and the existence of solutions of Schrödinger\'s equation and the wave equation are problematic in the presence of resonances. Such resonances can be avoided, or at least mitigated, by using ideas from Diophantine approximation, a branch of number theory. Applications of Diophantine approximation to these problems will be given and will include a connection with LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), a space-based gravity wave detector under construction.

In a forensic context, digital photographs are becoming more common as sources of evidence in criminal and civil matters. Questions that arise include identifying the make and model of a camera to assist in the gathering of physical evidence; matching photographs to a particular camera through the camera’s unique characteristics; and determining the integrity of a digital image, including whether the image contains steganographic information. From a digital file perspective, there is also the question of whether metadata has been deliberately modified to mislead the investigator, and in the case of multiple images, whether a timeline can be established from the various timestamps within the file, imposed by the operating system or determined by other image characteristics. This talk is concerned specifically with techniques to identify the make, model series and particular source camera model given a digital image. We exploit particular characteristics of the camera’s JPEG coder to demonstrate that such identification is possible, and that even when an image has subsequently been re-processed, there are often sufficient residual characteristics of the original coding to at least narrow down the possible camera models of interest.

Wireless sensor and actuator networks (SANETs) represent an important extension of sensor networks, allowing nodes within the network to make autonomous decisions and perform actions (actuation) in response to sensor measurements and shared information. SANETS combine aspects of sensor networks and multi-robot systems, and the merger gives rise to an array of challenges absent from conventional sensor networks. SANETs are active systems that must use the sensed information to modify the environment in order to elicit a desired response. This involves the development of an actuation strategy, a set of decision rules that specify how the network responds to sensed conditions. In this talk, I will discuss the challenges involved in using distributed algorithms to learn suitable actuation strategies. I will draw connections with the class of learning satisfiability problems, which includes a range of learning tasks involving multiple constraints.

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in finite projective spaces, and important applications to practical topics such as coding theory, cryptography and design of experiments have made the field even more attractive. In my talk some classical problems and recent developments will be discussed. First I will mention Segre's celebrated theorem and ovals and a purely combinatorial characterization of Hermitian curves in the projective plane over a finite field here, from the beginning, the considered pointset is contained in the projective plane over a finite field. Next, a recent elegant result on semiovals in PG(2,q), due to Gács, will be given. A second approach is where the object is described as an incidence structure satisfying certain properties; here the geometry is not a priori embedded in a projective space. This will be illustrated by a characterization of the classical inversive plane in the odd case. Another quite recent beautiful result in Galois geometry is the discovery of an infinite class of hemisystems of the Hermitian variety in PG(3,q^2), leading to new interesting classes of incidence structures, graphs and codes; before this result, just one example for GF(9), due to Segre, was known.

These well-known differential operators are, of course, important in applied mathematics. This is just the tip of an iceberg. I shall indicate some of what lies beneath the surface. There are links with topology, physics, symmetry groups, finite element schemes, and more besides. This talk will touch on these different topics by means of examples. Little prior knowledge will be assumed beyond the equality of mixed partial derivatives.

We often want to search the web for information on a given topic. Early web-search algorithms worked by counting up the number of times the words in a query topic appeared on each webpage. If the topic words appeared often on a given page, that page was ranked highly as a source of information on that topic. More recent algorithms rely on Link Analysis. People make judgments about how useful a given page is for a given topic, and they express these judgments through the hyperlinks they choose to put on their own webpages. Link-analysis algorithms aim to mine the collective wisdom encoded in the resulting network of links. I will discuss the linear algebra that forms the common underpinning of three link-analysis algorithms for web search. I will also present some work on refining one such algorithm, Kleinberg's HITS algorithm. This is joint work with Joel Miller, Greg Rae, Fred Schaefer, Ayman Farahat, Tom LoFaro, Tracy Powell, Estelle Basor, and Kent Morrison. It originated in a Mathematics Clinic project at Harvey Mudd College.

The breakup of a mass of fluid into drops is a ubiquitous phenomenon in daily life, the natural environment and technology, with common examples including a dripping tap, ocean spray and ink-jet printing. It is a feature of many generic industrial processes such as spraying, emulsification, aeration, mixing and atomisation, and is an undesirable feature in coating and fibre spinning. Surface-tension driven pinch-off and the subsequent recoil are examples of finite-time singularities in which the interfacial curvature becomes infinite at the point of disconnection. As a result, the flow near the point of disconnection becomes self-similar and independent of initial and far-field conditions. Similarity solutions will be presented for the cases of inviscid and very viscous flow, along with comparison to experiments. In each case, a boundary-integral representation can be used both to examine the time-dependent behaviour and as the basis of a modified Newton scheme for direct solution of the similarity equations.

To model real data sets using second order stochastic processes imposes that the data sets verify the second order stationarity condition. This stationarity condition concerns the unconditional moments of the process. It is in that context that most of models developed from the sixties' have been studied; We refer to the ARMA processes (Brockwell and Davis, 1988), the ARCH, GARCH and EGARCH models (Engle, 1982, Bollerslev, 1986, Nelson, 1990), the SETAR process (Lim and Tong, 1980 and Tong, 1990), the bilinear model (Granger and Andersen, 1978, Guégan, 1994), the EXPAR model (Haggan and Ozaki, 1980), the long memory process (Granger and Joyeux, 1980, Hosking, 1981, Gray, Zang and Woodward, 1989, Beran, 1994, Giraitis and Leipus, 1995, Guégan, 2000), the switching process (Hamilton, 1988). For all these models, we get an invertible causal solution under specific conditions on the parameters, then the forecast points and the forecast intervals are available.

Thus, the stationarity assumption is the basis for a general asymptotic theory for identification, estimation and forecasting. It guarantees that the increase of the sample size leads to more and more information of the same kind which is basic for an asymptotic theory to make sense.

Now non-stationarity modelling has also a long tradition in econometrics. This one is based on the conditional moments of the data generating process. It appears mainly in the heteroscedastic and volatility models, like the GARCH and related models, and stochastic volatility processes (Ghysels, Harvey and Renault 1997). This non-stationarity appears also in a different way with structural changes models like the switching models (Hamilton, 1988), the stopbreak model (Diebold and Inoue, 2001, Breidt and Hsu, 2002, Granger and Hyung, 2004) and the SETAR models, for instance. It can also be observed from linear models with time varying coefficients (Nicholls and Quinn, 1982, Tsay, 1987).

Thus, using stationary unconditional moments suggest a global stationarity for the model, but using non-stationary unconditional moments or non-stationary conditional moments or assuming existence of states suggest that this global stationarity fails and that we only observe a local stationary behavior.

The growing evidence of instability in the stochastic behavior of stocks, of exchange rates, of some economic data sets like growth rates for instance, characterized by existence of volatility or existence of jumps in the variance or on the levels of the prices imposes to discuss the assumption of global stationarity and its consequence in modelling, particularly in forecasting. Thus we can address several questions with respect to these remarks.

1. What kinds of non-stationarity affect the major financial and economic data sets? How to detect them?

2. Local and global stationarities: How are they defined?

3. What is the impact of evidence of non-stationarity on the statistics computed from the global non stationary data sets?

4. How can we analyze data sets in the non-stationary global framework? Does the asymptotic theory work in non-stationary framework?

5. What kind of models create local stationarity instead of global stationarity? How can we use them to develop a modelling and a forecasting strategy?

These questions began to be discussed in some papers in the economic literature. For some of these questions, the answers are known, for others, very few works exist. In this talk I will discuss all these problems and will propose 2 new stategies and modelling to solve them. Several interesting topics in empirical finance awaiting future research will also be discussed.

The talk addresses a gap in the educational curriculum for 1st year students by proposing a new course that aims at getting students to think about how to frame and solve unstructured problems. The idea is to increase the student's mathematical awareness and problem-solving skills by discussing a variety of puzzles. The talk makes an argument that this approach - called Puzzle-Based Learning - is very beneficial for introducing mathematics, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

The new course has been approved by the University of Adelaide for Faculty of Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics. Many other universities are in the process of introducing such a course. The course will be offered in two versions: (a) full-semester course and (b) a unit within general course (e.g. Introduction to Engineering). All teaching materials (power point slides, assignments, etc.) are being prepared. The new textbook (Puzzle-Based Learning: Introduction to Critical Thinking, Mathematics, and Problem Solving) will be available from June 2008. The talk provides additional information on this development.

For further information see http://www.PuzzleBasedlearning.edu.au/

Atherosclerosis, characterised by plaques, is the most common arterial disease. Plaques tend to develop in regions of low mean wall shear stress, and regions where the wall shear stress changes direction during the course of the cardiac cycle. To investigate the effect of the arterial geometry and driving pressure gradient on the wall shear stress distribution we consider an idealised model of a curved artery with uniform curvature. We assume that the flow is fully-developed and seek solutions of the governing equations, finding the effect of the parameters on the flow and wall shear stress distribution. Most previous work assumes the curvature ratio is asymptotically small; however, many arteries have significant curvature (e.g. the aortic arch has curvature ratio approx 0.25), and in this work we consider in particular the effect of finite curvature.

We present an extensive analysis of curved-pipe flow driven by a steady and unsteady pressure gradients. Increasing the curvature causes the shear stress on the inside of the bend to rise, indicating that the risk of plaque development would be overestimated by considering only the weak curvature limit.

We will report on our attempts to understand noncommutative geometry in the lights of the example of quantum spheres. We will see how to produce an equivariant fundamental class and also indicate some of the limitations of isospectral deformations.

This talk is concerned with the evolution of an unbounded inviscid fluid-fluid interface subject to an axisymmetric impulse in pressure and how inertial, interfacial and gravitational forces affect that evolution. The construct was motivated by the occurrence of lung hemorrhage resulting from ultrasonic imaging and pursues the notion that bursts of ultrasound act to expel droplets that puncture the soft air-filled sacs in the lung plural surface allowing them to fill with blood. The evolution of the free surface is described by a boundary integral formulation which is integrated forward in time numerically. As the interface evolves, it is seen, depending upon the levels of gravity and surface tension, to form either axisymmetric surface jets, waves or droplets. Moreover the droplets may be spherical, inverted tear-shaped or pancake like. Also of interest is the finite time singularity which occurs when the drop pinches off; this is seen to be of the power law type with an exponent of 2/3.

Noncommutative geometry (in the sense of Alain Connes) involves replacing a conventional space by a "space" in which the algebra of functions is noncommutative. The simplest truly non-trivial noncommutative manifold is the noncommutative 2-torus, whose algebra of functions is also called the irrational rotation algebra. I will discuss a number of recent results on geometric analysis on the noncommutative torus, including the study of nonlinear noncommutative elliptic PDEs (such as the noncommutative harmonic map equation) and noncommutative complex analysis (with noncommutative elliptic functions).

The last scientific conversation I had with Ernie Tuck was on liquid impact. As a matter of fact, we discussed the paper by J.H. Milgram, Journal of Fluid Mechanics 37 (1969), entitled "The motion of a fluid in a cylindrical container with a free surface following vertical impact." Liquid impact is a key issue in sloshing and in particular in sloshing in tanks of LNG vessels. Numerical simulations of sloshing have been performed by various groups, using various types of numerical methods. In terms of the numerical results, the outcome is often impressive, but the question remains of how relevant these results are when it comes to determining impact pressures. The numerical models are too simplified to reproduce the high variability of the measured pressures. In fact, for the time being, it is not possible to simulate accurately both global and local effects. Unfortunately it appears that local effects predominate over global effects when the behaviour of pressures is considered. Having said this, it is important to point out that numerical studies can be quite useful to perform sensitivity analyses in idealized conditions such as a liquid mass falling under gravity on top of a horizontal wall and then spreading along the lateral sides. Simple analytical models inspired by numerical results on idealized problems can also be useful to predict trends. The talk is organized as follows: After a brief introduction on the sloshing problem and on scaling laws, it will be explained to what extent numerical studies can be used to improve our understanding of impact pressures. Results on a liquid mass hitting a wall obtained by a finite-volume code with interface reconstruction as well as results obtained by a simple analytical model will be shown to reproduce the trends of experiments on sloshing. This is joint work with L. Brosset (GazTransport & Technigaz), J.-M. Ghidaglia (ENS Cachan) and J.-P. Braeunig (INRIA).

We introduce the four classes of complex manifolds defined by having few or many holomorphic maps to or from the complex plane. Two of these classes have played an important role in complex geometry for a long time. A third turns out to be too large to be of much interest. The fourth class has only recently emerged from work of Abel Prize winner Mikhail Gromov.

A basic example of a Hopf algebra is a group algebra: it is the vector space having the group as basis and having multiplication linearly extending that of the group. We can start with a category instead of a group, form the free vector space on the set of its morphisms, and define multiplication to be composition when possible and zero when not. The multiplication has an identity if the category has finitely many objects; this is a basic example of a weak bialgebra. It is a weak Hopf algebra when the category is a groupoid. Group algebras are also Frobenius algebras. We shall generalize weak bialgebras and Frobenius algebras to the context of monoidal categories and describe some of their theory using the geometry of string diagrams.

The ordinary integral on L^1 functions on R^d unfortunately does not extend to a translation invariant linear form on the whole algebra of pseudodifferential symbols on R^d, forcing to work with ordinary linear extensions which fail to be translation invariant. Defect formulae which express the difference between various linear extensions, show that they differ by local terms involving the noncommutative residue. In particular, we shall show how integrals regularised by a "dimensional regularisation" procedure familiar to physicists differ from Hadamard finite part (or "cut-off" regularised) integrals by a residue. When extended to pseudodifferential operators on closed manifolds, these defect formulae express the zeta regularised traces of a differential operator in terms of a residue of its logarithm. In particular, we shall express the index of a Dirac type operator on a closed manifold in terms of a logarithm of a generalized Laplacian, thus giving an a priori local description of the index and shall discuss further applications.

The simple groups are the building blocks of all finite groups. The classification of finite simple groups is a towering achievement of 20th century mathematics. In addition to 18 infinite families of finite simple groups, there are 26 sporadic groups. The biggest sporadic group, dubbed The Monster, has about 10^54 elements. The talk will give a glimpse of this deep area of mathematics.

Given a polynomial in two or more variables, one may study the zero locus from the point of view of different mathematical subjects (number theory, algebraic geometry, ...). I will explain how tropical geometry allows to encode all topological aspects by elementary combinatorial objects called "tropical varieties." Mohammed Abouzaid received a B.S. in 2002 from the University of Richmond, and a Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Paul Seidel. He is interested in symplectic topology and its interactions with algebraic geometry and differential topology, in particular the homological mirror symmetry conjecture. Since 2007 he has been a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow.

Stable commutator length answers the question: "what is the simplest surface in a given space with prescribed boundary?" where "simplest" is interpreted in topological terms. This topological definition is complemented by several equivalent definitions - in group theory, as a measure of non-commutativity of a group; and in linear programming, as the solution of a certain linear optimization problem. On the topological side, scl is concerned with questions such as computing the genus of a knot, or finding the simplest 4-manifold that bounds a given 3-manifold. On the linear programming side, scl is measured in terms of certain functions called quasimorphisms, which arise from hyperbolic geometry (negative curvature) and symplectic geometry (causal structures). In these talks we will discuss how scl in free and surface groups is connected to such diverse phenomena as the existence of closed surface subgroups in graphs of groups, rigidity and discreteness of symplectic representations, bounding immersed curves on a surface by immersed subsurfaces, and the theory of multi- dimensional continued fractions and Klein polyhedra. Danny Calegari is the Richard Merkin Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, and is one of the recipients of the 2009 Clay Research Award for his work in geometric topology and geometric group theory. He received a B.A. in 1994 from the University of Melbourne, and a Ph.D. in 2000 from the University of California, Berkeley under the joint supervision of Andrew Casson and William Thurston. From 2000 to 2002 he was Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor at Harvard University, after which he joined the Caltech faculty; he became Richard Merkin Professor in 2007.

Fourier-Mukai transforms are a geometric analogue of integral transforms playing an important role in algebraic geometry. Their name derives from the construction of Mukai involving the Poincare line bundle associated to an abelian variety. In this talk I will discuss recent work looking at an analogue of this original Fourier-Mukai transform in the context of differential geometry, which gives an isomorphism between the invariant differential cohomology of a real torus and its dual.

Berger's classification of irreducibly represented Lie groups that can occur as holonomy groups of semi-Riemannian manifolds is a remarkable result of modern differential geometry. What is remarkable about it is that it is so short and that only so few types of geometry can occur. In Riemannian signature this is even more remarkable, taking into account that any representation of a compact Lie group admits a positive definite invariant scalar product. Hence, for any not too small n there is an abundance of irreducible subgroups of SO(n). We show that in other signatures the situation is quite different with, for example, SO(1,n) having no proper irreducible subgroups. We will show how this and the corresponding result about irreducible subgroups of SO(2,n) follows from the Karpelevich-Mostov theorem. (This is joint work with Antonio J. Di Scala, Politecnico di Torino.)

This presentation concerns the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) that occurs between a fluid flow and an arbitrarily deforming flexible boundary considered to be a flexible panel or a compliant coating that comprises the wetted surface of a marine vehicle. We develop and deploy an approach that is a hybrid of computational and theoretical techniques. The system studied is two-dimensional and linearised disturbances are assumed. Of particular novelty in the present work is the ability of our methods to extract a full set of fluid-structure eigenmodes for systems that have strong spatial inhomogeneity in the structure of the flexible wall.

We first present the approach and some results of the system in which an ideal, zero-pressure gradient, flow interacts with a flexible plate held at both its ends. We use a combination of boundary-element and finite-difference methods to express the FSI system as a single matrix equation in the interfacial variable. This is then couched in state-space form and standard methods used to extract the system eigenvalues. It is then shown how the incorporation of spatial inhomogeneity in the stiffness of the plate can be either stabilising or destabilising. We also show that adding a further restraint within the streamwise extent of a homogeneous panel can trigger an additional type of hydroelastic instability at low flow speeds. The mechanism for the fluid-to-structure energy transfer that underpins this instability can be explained in terms of the pressure-signal phase relative to that of the wall motion and the effect on this relationship of the added wall restraint.

We then show how the ideal-flow approach can be conceptually extended to include boundary-layer effects. The flow field is now modelled by the continuity equation and the linearised perturbation momentum equation written in velocity-velocity form. The near-wall flow field is spatially discretised into rectangular elements on an Eulerian grid and a variant of the discrete-vortex method is applied. The entire fluid-structure system can again be assembled as a linear system for a single set of unknowns - the flow-field vorticity and the wall displacements - that admits the extraction of eigenvalues. We then show how stability diagrams for the fully-coupled finite flow-structure system can be assembled, in doing so identifying classes of wall-based or fluid-based and spatio-temporal wave behaviour.

Suppose $f_1,f_2,\ldots,f_n$ are linear polynomials in $\ell$ variables and $\lambda_1,\lambda_2,\ldots,\lambda_n$ are nonzero complex numbers. The product $$ \Phi_\lambda=\Prod_{i=1}^n f_1^{\lambda_i}, $$ called a master function, defines a (multivalued) function on $\ell$-dimensional complex space, or more precisely, on the complement of a set of hyperplanes. Then it is easy to ask (but harder to answer) what the set of critical points of a master function looks like, in terms of some properties of the input polynomials and $\lambda_i$'s. In my talk I will describe the motivation for considering such a question. Then I will indicate how the geometry and combinatorics of hyperplane arrangements can be used to provide at least a partial answer.

A 'word' is a finite or infinite sequence of symbols (called 'letters') taken from a finite non-empty set (called an 'alphabet'). In mathematics, words naturally arise when one wants to represent elements from some set (e.g., integers, real numbers, p-adic numbers, etc.) in a systematic way. For instance, expansions in integer bases (such as binary and decimal expansions) or continued fraction expansions allow us to associate with every real number a unique finite or infinite sequence of digits.

In this talk, I will discuss some old and new results in Combinatorics on Words and their applications to problems in Number Theory. In particular, by transforming inequalities between real numbers into (lexicographic) inequalities between infinite words representing their binary expansions, I will show how combinatorial properties of words can be used to completely describe the minimal intervals containing all fractional parts {x*2^n}, for some positive real number x, and for all non-negative integers n. This is joint work with Jean-Paul Allouche (Universite Paris-Sud, France).

After a general introduction to integrable systems, we will explain an approach to their solution theory, which is based on Banach space theory. The main point is first to shift attention to noncommutative integrable systems and then to extract information about the original setting via projection techniques. The resulting solution formulas turn out to be particularly well-suited to the qualitative study of certain solution classes. We will show how one can obtain a complete asymptotic description of the so called multiple pole solutions, a problem that was only treated for special cases before.

Ever since Sophus Lie around 1880, continuous groups of invariance transformations have been used to reduce variables and to construct special solutions of PDEs. I will outline the general ideas, then show some variations on the usual reduction algorithm that I have used to solve some practical nonlinear boundary value problems. Applications include soil-water flow, metal surface evolution and population genetics.

The sequence first, second, third,... can be continued with infinite ordinal numbers. I will explain what these infinite numbers are and how they can be used -- and sometimes must be used! -- to prove facts about ordinary, finite numbers.

Jeffery–Hamel flows describe the steady two-dimensional flow of an incompressible viscous fluid between plane walls separated by an angle $\alpha$. They are often used to approximate the flow in domains of finite radial extent. However, whilst the base Jeffery–Hamel solution is characterised by a subcritical pitchfork bifurcation, studies in expanding channels of finite length typically find symmetry breaking via a supercritical bifurcation.

We use the finite element method to calculate solutions for flow in a two-dimensional wedge of finite length bounded by arcs of constant radii, $R_1$ and $R_2$. We present a comprehensive picture of the bifurcation structure and nonlinear states for a net radial outflow of fluid. We find a series of nested neutral curves in the Reynolds number-$\alpha$ plane corresponding to pitchfork bifurcations that break the midplane symmetry of the flow. We show that these finite domain bifurcations remain distinct from the similarity solution bifurcation even in the limit $R_2/R_1 \rightarrow \infty$.

We also discuss a class of stable steady solutions apparently related to a steady, spatially periodic, wave first observed by Tutty (1996). These solutions remain disconnected in our domain in the sense that they do not arise via a local bifurcation of the Stokes flow solution as the Reynolds number is increased.

Tissue engineering could be called 'the science of spare parts'. Although currently in its infancy, its long-term aim is to grow functional tissues and organs in vitro to replace those which have become defective through age, trauma or disease. Recent experiments have shown that mechanical interactions between cells and the materials in which they are grown have an important influence on tissue architecture, but in order to understand these effects, we first need to understand the mechanics of the gels themselves.

Many biological gels (e.g. collagen) used in tissue engineering have a fibrous microstructure which affects the way forces are transmitted through the material, and which in turn affects cell migration and other behaviours. I will present a simple continuum model of gel mechanics, based on treating the gel as a transversely isotropic viscous material. Two canonical problems are considered involving thin two-dimensional films: extensional flow, and squeezing flow of the fluid between two rigid plates. Neglecting inertia, gravity and surface tension, in each regime we can exploit the thin geometry to obtain a leading-order problem which is sufficiently tractable to allow the use of analytical methods. I discuss how these results could be exploited practically to determine the mechanical properties of real gels. If time permits, I will also talk about work currently in progress which explores the interaction between gel mechanics and cell behaviour.

The mathematical research community is facing a great challenge to re-evaluate the role of proof in light of the growing power of current computer systems, of modern mathematical computing packages, and of the growing capacity to data-mine on the Internet. Add to that the enormous complexity of many modern capstone results such as the Poincare conjecture, Fermat's last theorem, and the Classification of finite simple groups. As the need and prospects for inductive mathematics blossom, the requirement to ensure the role of proof is properly founded remains undiminished. I shall look at the philosophical context with examples and then offer some of five bench-marking examples of the opportunities and challenges we face.

In this talk, I shall briefly review the notion of stability for holomorphic vector bundles on compact complex manifolds as discussed in the first part of this talk (28 August 2009). Then I shall attempt to compute some explicit examples in simple situations, illustrating the use of basic algebraic-geometric tools. The level of the talk will be appropriate for graduate students, particularly those who have been taking part in the algebraic geometry reading group meetings.

The estimation of Bayesian networks given high-dimensional data sets, with more variables than there are observations, has been the focus of much recent research. These structures provide a flexible framework for the representation of the conditional independence relationships of a set of variables, and can be particularly useful in the estimation of genetic regulatory networks given gene expression data.

In this talk, I will discuss some new research on learning sparse networks, that is, networks with many conditional independence restrictions, using a score-based approach. In the case of genetic regulatory networks, such sparsity reflects the view that each gene is regulated by relatively few other genes. The presented approach allows prior information about the overall sparsity of the underlying structure to be included in the analysis, as well as the incorporation of prior knowledge about the connectivity of individual nodes within the network.

In the first part of the talk I will illustrate some basic concepts of differential geometry that lead to the notion of a holonomy group. Then I will explain Berger's classification of Riemannian holonomy groups and discuss questions that arose from it. Finally, I will focus on holonomy groups of Lorentzian manifolds and indicate briefly why all this is of relevance to present-day theoretical physics.

This talk is a continuation of the talk on 30 April. The same abstract applies: In this talk, I shall briefly review the notion of stability for holomorphic vector bundles on compact complex manifolds as discussed in the first part of this talk (28 August 2009). Then I shall attempt to compute some explicit examples in simple situations, illustrating the use of basic algebraic-geometric tools. The level of the talk will be appropriate for graduate students, particularly those who have been taking part in the algebraic geometry reading group meetings.

Data assimilation aims to solve one of the fundamental problems ofnumerical weather prediction - estimating the optimal state of the atmosphere given a numerical model of the dynamics, and sparse, noisy observations of the system. A standard tool in attacking this filtering problem is the Kalman filter.

We consider the problem when only partial observations are available. In particular we consider the situation where the observational space consists of variables which are directly observable with known observational error, and of variables of which only their climatic variance and mean are given. We derive the corresponding Kalman filter in a variational setting.

We analyze the variance constraining Kalman filter (VCKF) filter for a simple linear toy model and determine its range of optimal performance. We explore the variance constraining Kalman filter in an ensemble transform setting for the Lorenz-96 system, and show that incorporating the information on the variance on some un-observable variables can improve the skill and also increase the stability of the data assimilation procedure.

Using methods from dynamical systems theory we then systems where the un-observed variables evolve deterministically but chaotically on a fast time scale.

This is joint work with Lewis Mitchell and Sebastian Reich.

In the modern information era, managers (e.g. winemakers) recognize the competitive opportunities represented by decision-support tools which can provide a significant cost savings & revenue increases for their businesses. Wineries make daily decisions on the processing of grapes, from harvest time (prediction of maturity of grapes, scheduling of equipment and labour, capacity planning, scheduling of crushers) through tank farm activities (planning and scheduling of wine and juice transfers on the tank farm) to packaging processes (bottling and storage activities). As such operation is quite complex, the whole area is loaded with interesting OR-related issues. These include the issues of global vs. local optimization, relationship between prediction and optimization, operating in dynamic environments, strategic vs. tactical optimization, and multi-objective optimization & trade-off analysis. During the talk we address the above issues; a few real-world applications will be shown and discussed to emphasize some of the presented material.

We give an introduction to the use of adjoint equations (and solutions) for numerical error control and solution enhancement of PDEs. In addition, the same equations can be used for optimization routines and uncertainty quantification. We discuss the modification of these methods in the context of operator splitting and to non-variational (e.g. finite volume) methods. Finally, we conclude with an application of the method to the shallow water equations and discuss some of the hurdles that need to be overcome when extending adjoint methodologies to ocean and atmospheric modeling.

As a tool for studying enumerative problems in geometry Eynard and Orantin associate multilinear differentials to any plane curve. Their work comes from matrix models but does not require matrix models (for understanding or calculations). In some sense they describe deformations of complex structures of a curve and conjectural relationships to deformations of Kahler structures of an associated object. I will give an introduction to their invariants via explicit examples, mainly to do with the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, in which the plane curve has genus zero.

Counting lattice points in polytopes arises in many areas of pure and applied mathematics. A basic counting problem is this: how many different ways can one give change of 1 dollar into 5,10, 20 and 50 cent coins? This problem counts lattice points in a tetrahedron, and if there also must be exactly 10 coins then it counts lattice points in a triangle. The number of lattice points in polytopes can be used to measure the robustness of a computer network, or in statistics to test independence of characteristics of samples. I will describe the general structure of lattice point counts and the difficulty of calculations. I will then describe a particular lattice point count in which the structure simplifies considerably allowing one to calculate easily. I will spend a brief time at the end describing how this is related to the moduli space of Riemann surfaces.

The aim of the talk is to give an overview of the noncommutative geometry approach to index theory.

Are you a professional who works within a relevant sector and wish to share your knowledge and experience with Students? Are you a current Student who is looking for the opportunity to talk to an Industry Professional? Then the Student and Industry Program is for you!

This event aims to provide current students with the opportunity to talk one-on-one with past graduates and industry professionals; gaining practical industry knowledge to help define their career goals. Students, industry and the University alike have the opportunity to benefit from the connections made through the program.

Admission is free, but places are limited, so get in early. Contact Maryanne Noon by Friday 3rd September 2010 with your name, Student ID number and program. e: maryanne.noon@adelaide.edu.au p: 8313 0969

Other information Students are asked to arrive at 5:00pm sharp for a briefing prior to the function. Dress Code: Business Casual.

The sense of smell is important in nature, but the least well understood of our senses. A mathematical model of smell, which combines the transmission of volatile-organic-compound chemical signals (VOCs) on the wind, transduced by olfactory receptors in our noses into neural information, and assembled into our odour perception, is useful. Applications include regulations for odour nuisance, like German VDI protocols for calibrated noses, to the design of modern chemical sensors for extracting information from the environment and even for the perfume industry. This talk gives a broad overview of turbulent mixing in surface layers of the atmosphere, measurements of VOCs with PTR-MS (proton transfer reaction mass spectrometers), our noses, and integrated environmental models of the Alumina industry (a source of odour emissions) to help understand the science of smell.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been an important tool in the analysis of multivariate data. The principal components summarise data in fewer than the original number of variables without losing essential information, and thus allow a split of the data into signal and noise components. PCA is a linear method, based on elegant mathematical theory. The increasing complexity of data together with the emergence of fast computers in the later parts of the 20th century has led to a renaissance of PCA. The growing numbers of variables (in particular, high-dimensional low sample size problems), non-Gaussian data, and functional data (where the data are curves) are posing exciting challenges to statisticians, and have resulted in new research which extends the classical theory. I begin with the classical PCA methodology and illustrate the challenges presented by the complex data that we are now able to collect. The main part of the talk focuses on extensions of PCA: the duality of PCA and the Principal Coordinates of Multidimensional Scaling, Sparse PCA, and consistency results relating to principal components, as the dimension grows. We will also look at newer developments such as Principal Component Regression and Supervised PCA, nonlinear PCA and Functional PCA.

Lecture Series by Dan Freed (University of Texas, Austin). Dirac introduced his eponymous operator to describe electrons in quantum theory. It was rediscovered by Atiyah and Singer in their study of the index problem on manifolds. In these lectures we explore new theorems and applications. Several of these also involve K-theory in its recent twisted and differential variations. These lectures will be supplemented by additional talks by invited speakers. For more details, please see the conference webpage: http://www.iga.adelaide.edu.au/workshops/WorkshopOct2010/

This paper builds on earlier work by Davis and Hobson (Mathematical Finance, 2007) giving model-free---except for a 'frictionless markets' assumption--- necessary and sufficient conditions for absence of arbitrage given a set of current-time put and call options on some underlying asset. Here we suppose that the prices of a set of put options, all maturing at the same time, are given and satisfy the conditions for consistency with absence of arbitrage. We now add a path-dependent option, specifically a weighted variance swap, to the set of traded assets and ask what are the conditions on its time-0 price under which consistency with absence of arbitrage is maintained. In the present work, we work under the extra modelling assumption that the underlying asset price process has continuous paths. In general, we find that there is always a non- trivial lower bound to the range of arbitrage-free prices, but only in the case of a corridor swap do we obtain a finite upper bound. In the case of, say, the vanilla variance swap, a finite upper bound exists when there are additional traded European options which constrain the left wing of the volatility surface in appropriate ways.

Most of us are familiar with the problem of making circular holes in wood or other material. For smaller diameter holes we typically use a drill, and for larger diameter holes a spade-bit, hole-saw or plunge router may be used. However for some applications, like mortise-and-tenon joints, what is needed is a tool that will produce a hole with a cross-section that is something other than a circle. In this talk we look at curves that may be used as the basis for a device that will produce holes with a cross-section of an equilateral triangle, square, or any regular polygon. Along the way we will touch on areas of engineering, algebra, geometry, calculus, Gothic art and architecture.

We consider smooth real hypersurfaces in a complex vector space. Specifically, we are interested in tube hypersurfaces, i.e., hypersurfaces represented as the direct product of the imaginary part of the space and hypersurfaces lying in its real part. Tube hypersurfaces arise, for instance, as the boundaries of tube domains. The study of tube domains is a classical subject in several complex variables and complex geometry, which goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, already Siegel found it convenient to realise certain symmetric domains as tubes. One can endow a tube hypersurface with a so-called CR-structure, which is the remnant of the complex structure on the ambient vector space. We impose on the CR-structure the condition of sphericity. One way to state this condition is to require a certain curvature (called the CR-curvature of the hypersurface) to vanish identically. Spherical tube hypersurfaces possess remarkable properties and are of interest from both the complex-geometric and affine-geometric points of view. I my talk I will give an overview of the theory of such hypersurfaces. In particular, I will mention an algebraic construction arising from this theory that has applications in abstract commutative algebra and singularity theory. I will speak about these applications in detail in my colloquium talk later today.

To every Gorenstein algebra of finite dimension greater than 1 over a field of characteristic zero, and a projection on its maximal ideal with range equal to the annihilator of the ideal, one can associate a certain algebraic hypersurface lying in the ideal. Such hypersurfaces possess remarkable properties. They can be used, for instance, to help decide whether two given Gorenstein algebras are isomorphic, which for the case of complex numbers leads to interesting consequences in singularity theory. Also, for the case of real numbers such hypersurfaces naturally arise in CR-geometry. In my talk I will discuss these hypersurfaces and some of their applications.

Bioinformatics is a new field of research which encompasses mathematics, computer science, biology, medicine and the physical sciences. It has arisen from the need to handle and analyse the vast amounts of data being generated by the new genomics technologies. The interface of these disciplines used to be information-poor, but is now information-mega-rich, and statistics plays a central role in processing this information and making it intelligible. In this talk, I will describe a published bioinformatics study which claimed to have developed a simple test for the early detection of ovarian cancer from a blood sample. The US Food and Drug Administration was on the verge of approving the test kits for market in 2004 when demonstrated flaws in the study design and analysis led to its withdrawal. We are still waiting for an effective early biomarker test for ovarian cancer.

Markov population processes are popular models for studying a wide range of phenomena including the spread of disease, the evolution of chemical reactions and the movements of organisms in population networks (metapopulations). Our ability to use these models effectively can be limited by our knowledge about parameters, such as disease transmission and recovery rates in an epidemic. Recently, there has been interest in devising optimal experimental designs for stochastic models, so that practitioners can collect data in a manner that maximises the precision of maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters for these models. I will discuss some recent work on optimal design for a variety of population models, beginning with some simple one-parameter models where the optimal design can be obtained analytically and moving on to more complicated multi-parameter models in epidemiology that involve latent states and non-exponentially distributed infectious periods. For these more complex models, the optimal design must be arrived at using computational methods and we rely on a Gaussian diffusion approximation to obtain analytical expressions for Fisher's information matrix, which is at the heart of most optimality criteria in experimental design. I will outline a simple cross-entropy algorithm that can be used for obtaining optimal designs for these models. We will also explore the improvements in experimental efficiency when using the optimal design over some simpler designs, such as the design where observations are spaced equidistantly in time.

The Hochschild cochain complex of an associative algebra provides an important bridge between algebra and geometry. Algebraically, this is the derived center of the algebra. Geometrically, the Hochschild cohomology of the algebra of smooth functions on a manifold is isomorphic to the graduate space of polyvector fields on this manifold. There are many important operations acting on the Hochschild complex. It is, however, a tricky question to ask which operations are natural because the Hochschild complex is not a functor. In my talk I will explain how we can overcome this obstacle and compute all possible natural operations on the Hochschild complex. The result leads immediately to a proof of the Deligne conjecture on Hochschild cochains.

The problem of optimal arrangement of nodes of a random weighted graph is discussed in this workshop. The nodes of graphs under study are fixed, but their edges are random and established according to the so called edge-probability function. This function is assumed to depend on the weights attributed to the pairs of graph nodes (or distances between them) and a statistical parameter. It is the purpose of experimentation to make inference on the statistical parameter and thus to extract as much information about it as possible. We also distinguish between two different experimentation scenarios: progressive and instructive designs.

We adopt a utility-based Bayesian framework to tackle the optimal design problem for random graphs of this kind. Simulation based optimisation methods, mainly Monte Carlo and Markov Chain Monte Carlo, are used to obtain the solution. We study optimal design problem for the inference based on partial observations of random graphs by employing data augmentation technique. We prove that the infinitely growing or diminishing node configurations asymptotically represent the worst node arrangements. We also obtain the exact solution to the optimal design problem for proximity (geometric) graphs and numerical solution for graphs with threshold edge-probability functions.

We consider inference and optimal design problems for finite clusters from bond percolation on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and derive a range of both numerical and analytical results for these graphs. We introduce inner-outer plots by deleting some of the lattice nodes and show that the ëmostly populatedí designs are not necessarily optimal in the case of incomplete observations under both progressive and instructive design scenarios. Some of the obtained results may generalise to other lattices.

The problem of optimal arrangement of nodes of a random weighted graph is discussed in this workshop. The nodes of graphs under study are fixed, but their edges are random and established according to the so called edge-probability function. This function is assumed to depend on the weights attributed to the pairs of graph nodes (or distances between them) and a statistical parameter. It is the purpose of experimentation to make inference on the statistical parameter and thus to extract as much information about it as possible. We also distinguish between two different experimentation scenarios: progressive and instructive designs.

We adopt a utility-based Bayesian framework to tackle the optimal design problem for random graphs of this kind. Simulation based optimisation methods, mainly Monte Carlo and Markov Chain Monte Carlo, are used to obtain the solution. We study optimal design problem for the inference based on partial observations of random graphs by employing data augmentation technique. We prove that the infinitely growing or diminishing node configurations asymptotically represent the worst node arrangements. We also obtain the exact solution to the optimal design problem for proximity (geometric) graphs and numerical solution for graphs with threshold edge-probability functions.

We consider inference and optimal design problems for finite clusters from bond percolation on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and derive a range of both numerical and analytical results for these graphs. We introduce inner-outer plots by deleting some of the lattice nodes and show that the ëmostly populatedí designs are not necessarily optimal in the case of incomplete observations under both progressive and instructive design scenarios. Some of the obtained results may generalise to other lattices.

The field of Object Oriented Data Analysis has made a lot of progress on the statistical analysis of the variation in populations of complex objects. A particularly challenging example of this type is populations of tree-structured objects. Deep challenges arise, which involve a marriage of ideas from statistics, geometry, and numerical analysis, because the space of trees is strongly non-Euclidean in nature. These challenges, together with three completely different approaches to addressing them, are illustrated using a real data example, where each data point is the tree of blood arteries in one person's brain.

Tensors are important objects that are frequently used in a variety of fields including continuum mechanics, general relativity and differential geometry. Despite their importance, they are often defined poorly (if at all) which contributes to a lack of understanding. In this talk, I will give a concrete definition of a tensor and provide some familiar examples. For the remainder of the talk, I will discuss some applications—here I mean applications in the pure maths sense (i.e. more abstract nonsense, but hopefully still interesting).

The core of the Internet is made up of many different computers (called routers) in many different interconnected networks, owned and operated by many different organisations. A popular and important field of study in the past has been "network topology": for instance, understanding which routers are connected to which other routers, or which networks are connected to which other networks; that is, studying and modelling the connection structure of the Internet. Previous study in this area has been plagued by unreliable or flawed experimental data and debate over appropriate models to use. The Internet Topology Zoo is a new source of network data created from the information that network operators make public. In order to better understand this body of network information we would like the ability to randomly generate network topologies resembling those in the zoo. Leveraging previous wisdom on networks produced as a result of optimisation processes, we propose a simple objective function based on possible economic constraints. By changing the relative costs in the objective function we can change the form of the resulting networks, and we compare these optimised networks to a variety of networks found in the Internet Topology Zoo.

Let x be a real number. This familiar and seemingly innocent assumption opens up a world of infinite variety and information. We use some simple techniques (powers of two, geometric series) to examine some interesting consequences of generating random real numbers, and encounter both the best flash drive and the worst flash drive you will ever meet. Come "hold infinity in the palm of your hand", and contemplate eternity for about half an hour. Almost nothing is assumed, almost everything is explained, and absolutely all are welcome.

The Rogers-Ramanujan identities are a pair of q-series identities proved by Leonard Rogers in 1894 which became famous two decades later as conjectures of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Since the 1980s it is known that the Rogers-Ramanujan identities are in fact identities for characters of certain modules for the affine Lie algebra A_1. This poses the obvious question as to whether there exist Rogers-Ramanujan identities for higher rank affine Lie algebras. In this talk I will describe some recent progress on this problem. I will also discuss a seemingly mysterious connection with the representation theory of quivers over finite fields.

In this talk I will give a gentle introduction to the mathematics surrounding the Selberg integral. Selberg's integral, which first appeared in two rather unusual papers by Atle Selberg in the 1940s, has become famous as much for its association with (other) mathematical greats such as Enrico Bombieri and Freeman Dyson as for its importance in algebra (Coxeter groups), geometry (hyperplane arrangements) and number theory (the Riemann hypothesis). In this talk I will review the remarkable history of the Selberg integral and discuss some of its early applications. Time permitting I will end the talk by describing some of my own, ongoing work on Selberg integrals related to Lie algebras.

The distribution of individual orbits of unipotent flows in homogeneous spaces are well understood thanks to the work work of Marina Ratner. It is conjectured that this property is preserved on restricting the times from the integers to primes, this being important in the study of prime numbers as well as in such dynamics. We review progress in understanding this conjecture, starting with Dirichlet (a finite system), Vinogradov (rotation of a circle or torus), Green and Tao (translation on a nilmanifold) and Ubis and Sarnak (horocycle flows in the semisimple case).

Mathematicians in Schools (MiS) is a CSIRO-supported endeavour that entails partnerships between mathematicians and high-schools. This relationship helps promote mathematics to high-school students. The MiS information night will consist of participants in established partnerships discussing their experiences and also an opportunity to ask about future participation.

Various physical processes take place on multiply-connected domains (domains with some number of 'holes'), such as the stirring of a fluid with paddles or the extrusion of material from a die. These systems may be described by partial differential equations (PDEs). However, standard numerical methods for solving PDEs are not well-suited to such examples: finite difference methods are difficult to implement on multiply-connected domains, especially when the boundaries are irregular or moving, while finite element methods are computationally expensive. In this talk I will describe a fast and accurate numerical method for solving certain PDEs on two-dimensional multiply-connected domains, considering Laplace's equation as an example. This method takes advantage of complex variable techniques which allow the solution to be found with spectral accuracy provided the boundary data is smooth. Other advantages over traditional numerical methods will also be discussed.

Lecture series by Eckhard Meinrenken, University of Toronto. Titles of individual lectures: 1) Introduction to G-valued moment maps. 2) Dirac geometry and Witten's volume formulas. 3) Dixmier-Douady theory and pre-quantization. 4) Quantization of group-valued moment maps. 5) Application to Verlinde formulas. These lectures will be supplemented by additional talks by invited speakers. For more details, please see the conference webpage.

Configuration spaces of points in R^n give a family of interesting geometric objects. They and their variants have numerous applications in geometry, topology, representation theory, and number theory. In this talk, we will review several of these manifestations (for instance, as moduli spaces, function spaces, and the like), and use them to address certain conjectures in number theory regarding distributions of number fields.

Within many populations there are frequent communications between pairs of individuals. Such communications might be emails sent within a company, radio communications in a disaster zone or diplomatic communications between states. Often it is of interest to understand the factors that drive the observed patterns of such communications, or to study how these factors are changing over over time. Communications can be thought of as events occuring on the edges of a network which connects individuals in the population. In this talk I'll present a model for such communications which uses ideas from social network theory to account for the complex correlation structure between events. Applications to the Enron email corpus and the dynamics of hospital ward transfer patterns will be discussed.

We consider the role that finite mixture distributions have played in the modelling of heterogeneous data, in particular for clustering continuous data via mixtures of normal distributions. A very brief history is given starting with the seminal papers by Day and Wolfe in the sixties before the appearance of the EM algorithm. It was the publication in 1977 of the latter algorithm by Dempster, Laird, and Rubin that greatly stimulated interest in the use of finite mixture distributions to model heterogeneous data. This is because the fitting of mixture models by maximum likelihood is a classic example of a problem that is simplified considerably by the EM's conceptual unification of maximum likelihood estimation from data that can be viewed as being incomplete. In recent times there has been a proliferation of applications in which the number of experimental units n is comparatively small but the underlying dimension p is extremely large as, for example, in microarray-based genomics and other high-throughput experimental approaches. Hence there has been increasing attention given not only in bioinformatics and machine learning, but also in mainstream statistics, to the analysis of complex data in this situation where n is small relative to p. The latter part of the talk shall focus on the modelling of such high-dimensional data using mixture distributions.

The problem of object matching under invariances can be studied using certain tools from metric geometry. The central idea is to regard objects as metric spaces (or metric measure spaces). The type of invariance that one wishes to have in the matching is encoded by the choice of the metrics with which one endows the objects. The standard example is matching objects in Euclidean space under rigid isometries: in this situation one would endow the objects with the Euclidean metric. More general scenarios are possible in which the desired invariance cannot be reflected by the preservation of an ambient space metric. Several ideas due to M. Gromov are useful for approaching this problem. The Gromov-Hausdorff distance is a natural candidate for doing this. However, this metric leads to very hard combinatorial optimization problems and it is difficult to relate to previously reported practical approaches to the problem of object matching. I will discuss different variations of these ideas, and in particular will show a construction of an L^p version of the Gromov-Hausdorff metric, called the Gromov-Wassestein distance, which is based on mass transportation ideas. This new metric directly leads to quadratic optimization problems on continuous variables with linear constraints. As a consequence of establishing several lower bounds, it turns out that several invariants of metric measure spaces turn out to be quantitatively stable in the GW sense. These invariants provide practical tools for the discrimination of shapes and connect the GW ideas to a number of pre-existing approaches.

Tropical geometry is a young field with multiple origins. These include the work of Bergman on logarithmic limit sets of algebraic varieties; the work of the Brazilian computer scientist Simon on discrete mathematics; the work of Bieri, Neumann and Strebel on geometric invariants of groups; and, of course, the work of Newton on polynomials. Even though there is still need for a unified foundation of the field, there is an abundance of applications of tropical geometry in group theory, combinatorics, computational algebra and algebraic geometry. In this talk I will give an overview of (what I understand to be) tropical geometry with a bias towards applications to group theory and low-dimensional topology.

Optical fibres are used extensively in modern telecommunications as they allow the transmission of information at high speeds. Microstructured optical fibres are a relatively new fibre design in which a waveguide for light is created by a series of air channels running along the length of the material. The flexibility of this design allows optical fibres to be created with adaptable (and previously unrealised) optical properties. However, the fluid flows that arise during fabrication can greatly distort the geometry, which can reduce the effectiveness of a fibre or render it useless. I will present an overview of the manufacturing process and highlight the difficulties. I will then focus on surface-tension driven deformation of the macroscopic version of the fibre extruded from a reservoir of molten glass, occurring during fabrication, which will be treated as a two-dimensional Stokes flow problem. I will outline two different complex-variable numerical techniques for solving this problem along with comparisons of the results, both to other models and to experimental data.

The simple experiment discussed in this talk, first conceived by Madden and Mullin (JFM, 1994) as part of their investigations into the non-uniqueness of decaying turbulent flow, consists of a fluid-filled torus which is rotated in an horizontal plane. Turbulence within the contained flow is triggered through a rapid change in its rotation rate. The flow instabilities which transition the flow to this turbulent state, however, are truly fascinating in their own right, and form the subject of this presentation. Flow features observed in both UK- and Auckland-based experiments will be highlighted, and explained through both boundary-layer analysis and full DNS. In concluding we argue that this flow regime, with its compact geometry and lack of cumbersome flow entry effects, presents an ideal regime in which to study many prototype flow behaviours, very much in the same spirit as Taylor-Couette flow.

Given a compact Riemann surface X and a point p in X, we construct a holomorphic function without critical points on the punctured (algebraic) Riemann surface R=X-p which is of finite order at the point p. In the case at hand this improves the 1967 theorem of Gunning and Rossi to the effect that every open Riemann surface admits a noncritical holomorphic function, but without any particular growth condition. (Joint work with Takeo Ohsawa.)

We prove that every circle domain in the Riemann sphere admits a proper holomorphic embedding into the affine plane C^2. By a circle domain we mean a domain obtained by removing from the Riemann sphere a finite or countable family of pairwise disjoint closed round discs. Our proof also applies to some circle domains with punctures. The uniformization theorem of He and Schramm (1996) says that every domain in the Riemann sphere with at most countably many boundary components is conformally equivalent to a circle domain, so our theorem embeds all such domains properly holomorphically in C^2. (Joint work with Erlend F. Wold.)

Electricity demand forecasting plays an important role in short-term load allocation and long-term planning for future generation facilities and transmission augmentation. Planners must adopt a probabilistic view of potential peak demand levels, therefore density forecasts (providing estimates of the full probability distributions of the possible future values of the demand) are more helpful than point forecasts, and are necessary for utilities to evaluate and hedge the financial risk accrued by demand variability and forecasting uncertainty. Electricity demand in a given season is subject to a range of uncertainties, including underlying population growth, changing technology, economic conditions, prevailing weather conditions (and the timing of those conditions), as well as the general randomness inherent in individual usage. It is also subject to some known calendar effects due to the time of day, day of week, time of year, and public holidays. I will describe a comprehensive forecasting solution designed to take all the available information into account, and to provide forecast distributions from a few hours ahead to a few decades ahead. We use semi-parametric additive models to estimate the relationships between demand and the covariates, including temperatures, calendar effects and some demographic and economic variables. Then we forecast the demand distributions using a mixture of temperature simulation, assumed future economic scenarios, and residual bootstrapping. The temperature simulation is implemented through a new seasonal bootstrapping method with variable blocks. The model is being used by the state energy market operators and some electricity supply companies to forecast the probability distribution of electricity demand in various regions of Australia. It also underpinned the Victorian Vision 2030 energy strategy.

The de Rham complex is of fundamental importance in differential geometry. After first introducing differential forms (in the familiar setting of Euclidean space), I will demonstrate how the de Rham complex elegantly encodes one half (in a sense which will become apparent) of the results from vector calculus. If there is time, I will indicate how results from the remaining half of the theory can be concisely expressed by a single, far more general theorem.

This is my PhD thesis submitted one month ago. Chapter 1 introduces the backgrounds of the research fields. Then each chapter is a published or an accepted paper. Chapter 2, to appear in Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, establishes the theory of Backward Stochastic Difference Equations with respect to the single jump process in discrete time. Chapter 3, published in Stochastic Analysis and Applications, establishes the theory of Backward Stochastic Differential Equations with respect to the single jump process in continuous time. Chapter 2 and 3 consist of Part I Theory. Chapter 4, published in Expert Systems With Applications, gives some examples about how to measure financial risks by the theory established in Chapter 2. Chapter 5, accepted by Journal of Applied Probability, considers the question of an optimal transaction between two investors to minimize their risks. It's the applications of the theory established in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 and 5 consist of Part II Applications.

Let pk=(N,e) be an RSA public key with corresponding secret key sk=(d,p,q,...). Assume that we obtain partial error-free information of sk, e.g., assume that we obtain half of the most significant bits of p. Then there are well-known algorithms to recover the full secret key. As opposed to these algorithms that allow for correcting erasures of the key sk, we present for the first time a heuristic probabilistic algorithm that is capable of correcting errors in sk provided that e is small. That is, on input of a full but error-prone secret key sk' we reconstruct the original sk by correcting the faults. More precisely, consider an error rate of d in [0,1), where we flip each bit in sk with probability d resulting in an erroneous key sk'. Our Las-Vegas type algorithm allows to recover sk from sk' in expected time polynomial in logN with success probability close to 1, provided that d is strictly less than 0.237. We also obtain a polynomial time Las-Vegas factorization algorithm for recovering the factorization (p,q) from an erroneous version with error rate d strictly less than 0.084.

In complex geometry a manifold is Stein if there are, in a certain sense, "many" holomorphic maps from the manifold into C^n. While this has long been well understood, a fruitful definition of the dual notion has until recently been elusive. In Oka theory, a manifold is Oka if it satisfies several equivalent definitions, each stating that the manifold has "many" holomorphic maps into it from C^n. Related to this is the geometric condition of ellipticity due to Gromov, who showed that it implies a complex manifold is Oka. We present recent contributions to three open questions involving elliptic and Oka manifolds. We show that affine quotients of C^n are elliptic, and combine this with an example of Margulis to construct new elliptic manifolds of interesting homotopy types. It follows that every open Riemann surface properly acyclically embeds into an elliptic manifold, extending an existing result for open Riemann surfaces with abelian fundamental group.

There are many interesting and difficult algorithmic problems in low-dimensional topology. Here we study the problem of finding a taut structure on a 3-manifold triangulation, whose existence has implications for both the geometry and combinatorics of the triangulation. We prove that detecting taut structures is "hard", in the sense that it is NP-complete. We also prove that detecting taut structures is "not too hard", by showing it to be fixed-parameter tractable. This is joint work with Jonathan Spreer.

What do practical topics such as linear programming and greedy heuristics have to do with theoretical problems such as unknot recognition and the Poincare conjecture? In this talk we explore new approaches to old and difficult computational problems from geometry and topology: how to tell whether a loop of string is knotted, or whether a 3-dimensional space has no interesting topological features. Although the best known algorithms for these problems run in exponential time, there is increasing evidence that a polynomial time solution might be possible. We outline several promising approaches in which computational geometry, linear programming and greedy algorithms all play starring roles.

The idea of continuous symmetry is often described in mathematics via Lie groups. These groups can be classified by their root systems: collections of vectors satisfying certain symmetry properties. The root systems are described in a concise way by Dynkin diagrams, and it turns out, roughly speaking, that there are only seven possible shapes for a Dynkin diagram. In this talk I'll describe some simple examples of Lie groups, explain what a root system is, and show how a Dynkin diagram encodes this information. Then I'll give a very brief sketch of the methods used to classify Dynkin diagrams.

A series of four 2-hour lectures by Dr. Ittay Weiss. The theory of dendroidal sets was introduced by Moerdijk and Weiss in 2007 in the study of homotopy operads in algebraic topology. In the five years that have past since then several fundamental and highly non-trivial results were established. For instance, it was established that dendroidal sets provide models for homotopy operads in a way that extends the Joyal-Lurie approach to homotopy categories. It can be shown that dendroidal sets provide new models in the study of n-fold loop spaces. And it is very recently shown that dendroidal sets model all connective spectra in a way that extends the modeling of certain spectra by Picard groupoids. The aim of the lecture series will be to introduce the concepts mentioned above, present the elementary theory, and understand the scope of the results mentioned as well as discuss the potential for further applications. Sources for the course will include the article "From Operads to Dendroidal Sets" (in the AMS volume on mathematical foundations of quantum field theory (also on the arXiv)) and the lecture notes by Ieke Moerdijk "simplicial methods for operads and algebraic geometry" which resulted from an advanced course given in Barcelona 3 years ago. No prior knowledge of operads will be assumed nor any knowledge of homotopy theory that is more advanced then what is required for the definition of the fundamental group. The basics of the language of presheaf categories will be recalled quickly and used freely.

There are several ways of viewing elements of K^1(X). One of these is via families of unbounded self-adjoint Fredholm operators on X. Each operator will have discrete spectrum, with infinitely many positive and negative eigenvalues of finite multiplicity. One can associate to such a family a geometric object, its graph, and the Chern character and other invariants of the family can be studied from this perspective. By restricting the dimension of the eigenspaces one may sometimes use algebraic topology to completely determine the family up to equivalence. This talk will describe the general framework and some applications to families on low-dimensional manifolds where the methods work well. Various notions related to spectral flow, the index gerbe and Berry phase play roles which will be discussed. This is joint work with Ron Douglas.

In the study of bounded operators on Hilbert spaces of holomorphic functions, concepts and techniques from complex geometry are important. An anti-holomorphic bundle exists on which one can define the Chern connection. Its curvature turns out to be a complete invariant and various operator notions can't be reframed in terms of geometrical ones which leads to the solution of some problems. We will discuss this approach with an emphasis on natural examples in the one and multivariable case.

The Banach-Tarski Paradox is one of the most counter intuitive results in set theory. It states that a ball can be cut up into a finite number of pieces, which using just rotations and translations can be reassembled into two identical copies of the original ball. This contradicts our naive belief that cutting, rotating and translating objects in Euclidean space should preserve volume. However the construction of the "cutting" is heavily dependent on the axiom of choice, and the resultant pieces are non-measurable, i.e. no consistent notion of volume can be assigned to them. A stronger form of the theorem states that any two bounded subsets of R^3 with non-empty interior are equidecomposable, that is one can be disassembled and reassembled into the other. I'll be going through a brief proof of the theorem (and in doing so further alienate the pure mathematicians in the room from everybody else).

Classical algebraic geometry is about studying solutions to systems of polynomial equations with complex coefficients. In arithmetic algebraic geometry, one digs deeper and studies the arithmetic properties of the solutions when the coefficients are rational, or even integral. From the usual point of view, it's impossible to go deeper than this for the simple reason that no smaller rings are available - the integers have no proper subrings. In this talk, I will explain how an emerging subject, lambda-algebraic geometry, allows one to do just this and why one might care.

Euclid's geometry describes the world around us in terms of points, lines and planes. For two thousand years these have formed the limited repertoire of basic geometric objects with which to describe the universe. Fractals immeasurably enhance this world-view by providing a description of much around us that is rough and fragmented---of objects that have structure on many sizes.

Let V = C^n, and let (-,-) be a non-degenerate bilinear form on V , which is either symmetric or anti-symmetric. Write G for the isometry group of (V , (-,-)); thus G = O_n (C) or Sp_n (C). The first fundamental theorem (FFT) provides a set of generators for End_G(V^{\otimes r} ) (r = 1, 2, . . . ), while the second fundamental theorem (SFT) gives all relations among the generators. In 1937, Brauer formulated the FFT in terms of his celebrated 'Brauer algebra' B_r (\pm n), but there has hitherto been no similar version of the SFT. One problem has been the generic non-semisimplicity of B_r (\pm n), which caused H Weyl to call it, in his work on invariants 'that enigmatic algebra'. I shall present a solution to this problem, which shows that there is a single idempotent in B_r (\pm n), which describes all the relations. The proof is through a new 'Brauer category', in which the fundamental theorems are easily formulated, and where a calculus of tangles may be used to prove these results. There are quantum analogues of the fundamental theorems which I shall also discuss. There are numerous applications in representation theory, geometry and topology. This is joint work with Ruibin Zhang.

Much of my recent research been directed at a problem in the theory of compact complex surfaces---trying to fill in a gap in the Enriques-Kodaira classification. Attempting to classify some collection of mathematical objects is a very common activity for pure mathematicians, and there are many well-known examples of successful classification schemes; for example, the classification of finite simple groups, and the classification of simply connected topological 4-manifolds. The aim of this talk will be to illustrate how techniques from differential geometry can be used to classify compact surfaces. The level of the talk will be very elementary, and the material is all very well known, but it is sometimes instructive to look back over simple cases of a general problem with the benefit of experience to gain greater insight into the more general and difficult cases.

In this talk, we shall use noncommutative geometry to obtain an index theorem in conformal geometry. This index theorem follows from an explicit and geometric computation of the Connes-Chern character of the spectral triple in conformal geometry, which was introduced recently by Connes and Moscovici. This (twisted) spectral triple encodes the geometry of the group of conformal diffeomorphisms on a spin manifold. The crux of of this construction is the conformal invariance of the Dirac operator. As a result, the Connes-Chern character is intimately related to the CM cocycle of an equivariant Dirac spectral triple. We compute this equivariant CM cocycle by heat kernel techniques. On the way we obtain a new heat kernel proof of the equivariant index theorem for Dirac operators. (Joint work with Raphael Ponge.)

A finite graph is called symmetric if its automorphism group is transitive on the set of arcs (ordered pairs of adjacent vertices) of the graph. This is to say that all arcs have the same status in the graph. I will talk about recent results on the classification of a family of symmetric graphs with complete quotients. The most interesting graphs arising from this classification are defined in terms of Hermitian unitals (which are specific block designs), and they admit unitary groups as groups of automorphisms. I will also talk about applications of our results in constructing large symmetric graphs of given degree and diameter. This talk contains joint work with M. Giulietti, S. Marcugini and F. Pambianco.

What network topologies should we use in order to achieve efficient information transmission? Of course answer to this question depends on how we measure efficiency of information dissemination. If we measure it by the minimum gossiping time under the store-and-forward, all-port and full-duplex model, we show that certain Cayley graphs associated with Frobenius groups are `perfect' in a sense. (A Frobenius group is a permutation group which is transitive but not regular such that only the identity element can fix two points.) Such graphs are also optimal for all-to-all routing in the sense that the maximum load on edges achieves the minimum. In this talk we will discuss this theory of optimal network design.

Traditionally, the geometric quantisation of an action by a compact Lie group on a compact symplectic manifold is defined as the equivariant index of a certain Dirac operator. This index is a well-defined formal difference of finite-dimensional representations, since the Dirac operator is elliptic and the manifold and the group in question are compact. From a mathematical and physical point of view however, it is very desirable to extend geometric quantisation to noncompact groups and manifolds. Defining a suitable index is much harder in the noncompact setting, but several interesting results in this direction have been obtained. I will review the difficulties connected to noncompact geometric quantisation, and some of the solutions that have been proposed so far, mainly in connection to the "quantisation commutes with reduction" principle. (An introduction to this principle will be given in my talk at the Colloquium on the same day.)

The "Quantisation commutes with reduction" principle is an idea from physics, which has powerful applications in mathematics. It basically states that the ways in which symmetry can be used to simplify a physical system in classical and quantum mechanics, are compatible. This provides a strong link between the areas in mathematics used to describe symmetry in classical and quantum mechanics: symplectic geometry and representation theory, respectively. It has been proved in the 1990s that quantisation indeed commutes with reduction, under the important assumption that all spaces and symmetry groups involved are compact. This talk is an introduction to this principle and, if time permits, its mathematical relevance.

Many problems within applied mathematics require the solution of a linear system of equations. For instance, models of arterial umbilical blood flow are obtained through a finite element approximation, resulting in a linear, n x n system. For small systems the solution is (almost) trivial, but what happens when n is large? Say, n ~ 10^6? In this case matrix inversion is expensive (read: completely impractical) and we seek approximate solutions in a reasonable time. In this talk I will discuss the basic theory underlying Krylov subspace methods; a class of non-stationary iterative methods which are currently the methods-of-choice for large, sparse, linear systems. In particular I will focus on the method of Generalised Minimum RESiduals (GMRes), which is of the most popular for nonsymmetric systems. It is hoped that through this presentation I will convince you that a) solving linear systems is not necessarily trivial, and that b) my lack of any tangible results is not (entirely) a result of my own incompetence.

From cryptanalysis to a powerful tool which made identity based cryptography possible, pairings have a range of applications in cryptography. I will present basic background (algebraic geometry) needed to understand pairings, hard problems associated with pairings and protocols which use pairings.

Electrokinetic techniques are used to gather specific information about concentrated dispersions such as electronic inks, mineral processing slurries, pharmaceutical products and biological fluids (e.g. blood). But, like most experimental techniques, intermediate quantities are measured, and consequently the method relies explicitly on theoretical modelling to extract the quantities of experimental interest. A self-consistent cell-model theory of electrokinetics can be used to determine the electrical conductivity of a dense suspension of spherical colloidal particles, and thereby determine the quantities of interest (such as the particle surface potential). The numerical predictions of this model compare well with published experimental results. High frequency asymptotic analysis of the cell-model leads to some interesting conclusions.

I will give a quick introduction to the notion of instanton, stressing its role in physics and in mathematics. I will also show how algebraic geometry provides powerful tools to study the geometry of the moduli spaces of instantons.

Suppose that the global eigenvalue distributions of two large random matrices A and B are known. It is a remarkable fact that, generically, the eigenvalue distribution of A + B and (if A and B are positive definite) A*B are uniquely determined from only the eigenvalue distributions of A and B; i.e., no information about eigenvectors are required. These operations on eigenvalue distributions are described by free probability theory. We construct a numerical toolbox that can efficiently and reliably calculate these operations with spectral accuracy, by exploiting the complex analytical framework that underlies free probability theory.

Generalized complex geometry combines complex and symplectic geometry into a single framework, incorporating also holomorphic Poisson and bi-Hermitian structures. The Dolbeault complex naturally extends to the generalized complex setting giving rise to Hodge structures in twisted cohomology. We consider the variations of Hodge structure and period mappings that arise from families of generalized complex manifolds. As an application we prove a local Torelli theorem for generalized Calabi-Yau manifolds.

I will give an introduction to a sequence of ideas in tropical geometry, the tropicalization of linear spaces. In the beginning, a construction due to De Concini and Procesi (wonderful models, 1995) gave a combinatorially explicit description of various iterated blowups of projective spaces along (proper transforms of) linear subspaces. A decade later, Tevelev's notion of tropical compactifications led to, in particular, a new view of the wonderful models and their intersection theory in terms of the theory of toric varieties (via work of Feichtner-Sturmfels, Feichtner-Yuzvinsky, Ardila-Klivans, and others). Recently, these ideas have played a role in Huh and Katz's proof of a long-standing conjecture in combinatorics.

In the talk there will be given a short review of holomorphic extension problems starting with the famous Hartogs theorem (1906) up to recent results on global holomorphic extensions for unbounded domains, obtained together with Al Boggess (Arizona State Univ.) and Zbigniew Slodkowski (Univ. Illinois at Chicago). There is an interesting geometry behind the extension problem for unbounded domains, namely (in some cases) it depends on the position of a complex variety in the closure of the domain. The extension problem appeared non-trivial and the work is in progress. However the talk will be illustrated by many figures and pictures and should be accessible also to graduate students.

Symplectic and projective structures may be compatibly combined. The resulting structure closely resembles conformal geometry and a manifold endowed with such a structure is called conformally Fedosov. This talk will present the basic theory of conformally Fedosov geometry and, in particular, construct a Cartan connection for them. This is joint work with Jan Slovak.

Harmonic functions are real-analytic and so automatically extend as functions of complex variables. But how far do they extend? This question may be answered by twistor theory, the Penrose transform, and associated conformal geometry. Nothing will be supposed about such matters: I shall base the constructions on an elementary yet mysterious formula of Bateman from 1904. This is joint work with Feng Xu.

I recently found the need to learn a little about what I had naively believed to be an abstruse branch of number theory, but which turns out to be a ubiquitous and intriguing theory. I'll introduce some of the geometry underlying the elementary theory of modular functions and modular forms. We'll look at some pictures and play with sage, time permitting.

A Markov chain is a stochastic process which is "memoryless", in that the next state of the chain depends only on the current state, and not on how it got there. It is a classical result that an ergodic Markov chain has a unique stationary distribution. However, classical theory does not provide any information on the rate of convergence to stationarity. Around 30 years ago, the mixing time of a Markov chain was introduced to measure the number of steps required before the distribution of the chain is within some small distance of the stationary distribution. One reason why this is important is that researchers in areas such as physics and biology use Markov chains to sample from large sets of interest. Rigorous bounds on the mixing time of their chain allows these researchers to have confidence in their results. Bounding the mixing time of combinatorial Markov chains can be a challenge, and there are only a few approaches available. I will discuss the main methods and give examples for each (with pretty pictures).

Abstract: In the late 1960s, Robert Langlands made a series of surprising conjectures relating fundamental concepts from number theory, representation theory, and algebraic geometry. Langlands' conjectures soon developed into a high-profile international research program known as the Langlands program. Many fundamental problems, including the Shimura-Taniyama-Weil conjecture (partially settled by Andrew Wiles in his proof of the Fermat's Last Theorem), are particular cases of the Langlands program. In this talk, I will discuss some of the motivation and results in this program.

Conformal Killing spinors are the solutions of the conformally covariant twistor equation on spinors. Special cases are parallel and Killing spinors, the latter appear as eigenspinors of the Dirac operator on compact Riemannian manifolds of positive scalar curvature for the smallest possible positive eigenvalue. In the talk I will discuss geometric properties of manifolds admitting (conformal) Killing spinors. In particular, I will explain a local classification of the special geometric structures admitting conformal Killing spinors without zeros in the Riemannian as well as in the Lorentzian setting.

The category of finite-dimensional smooth manifolds gives rise to interesting structures outside of itself, two examples being mapping spaces and classifying spaces. Diffeological spaces are a notion of generalised smooth space which form a cartesian closed category, so all fibre products and all mapping spaces of smooth manifolds exist as diffeological spaces. Differentiable stacks are a further generalisation that can also deal with moduli spaces (including classifying spaces) for objects with automorphisms. This talk will give an introduction to this circle of ideas.

A discrete isometry group acting properly discontinuously on the n-dimensional Euclidean space with compact quotient is called a crystallographic group. This name reflects the fact that in dimension n=3 their compact fundamental domains resemble a space-filling crystal pattern. For higher dimensions, Hilbert posed his famous 18th problem: "Is there in n-dimensional Euclidean space only a finite number of essentially different kinds of groups of motions with a [compact] fundamental region?" This problem was solved by Bieberbach when he proved that in every dimension n there exists only a finite number of isomorphic crystallographic groups and also gave a description of these groups. From the perspective of differential geometry these results are of major importance, as crystallographic groups are precisely the fundamental groups of compact flat Riemannian orbifolds. The quotient is even a manifold if the fundamental group is required to be torsion-free, in which case it is called a Bieberbach group. Moreover, for a flat manifold the fundamental group completely determines the holonomy group. In this talk I will discuss the properties of crystallographic groups, study examples in dimension n=2 and n=3, and present the three Bieberbach theorems on the structure of crystallographic groups.

We will describe what is known and remains to be known about the connection between the large scale geometry of non-compact Riemannian manifolds (and more general metric measure spaces) and large time estimates of their heat kernel. We will show how some of these estimates can be characterised in terms of Sobolev inequalities and give applications to the boundedness of Riesz transforms.

This interdisciplinary workshop will be about aspects of representation theory (in the sense of Harish-Chandra), aspects of noncommutative geometry (in the sense of Alain Connes) and aspects of operator K-theory (in the sense of Gennadi Kasparov). It features the renowned speaker, Professor Nigel Higson (Penn State University) http://www.iga.adelaide.edu.au/workshops/WorkshopJuly2013/ All are welcome.

The quantization commutes with reduction problem for Hamiltonian actions of compact Lie groups was solved by Meinrenken in the mid-1990s using geometric techniques, and solved again shortly afterwards by Tian and Zhang using analytic methods. In this talk I shall outline some of the close links that exist between the problem, the two solutions, and the geometric and analytic versions of K-homology theory that are studied in noncommutative geometry. I shall try to make the case for K-homology as a useful conceptual framework for the solutions and (at least some of) their various generalizations.

This talk will be about the mathematics of quantization and about representation theory, where the concept of quantization seems to be especially relevant. It was discovered by Kirillov in the 1960's that the representation theory of nilpotent Lie groups (such as the group that encodes Heisenberg's commutation relations) can be beautifully and efficiently described using a vocabulary drawn from geometry and quantum mechanics. The description was soon adapted to other classes of Lie groups, and the expectation that it ought to apply almost universally has come to be called the "orbit philosophy." But despite early successes, the orbit philosophy is in a decidedly unfinished state. I'll try to explain some of the issues and some possible new directions.