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Time-periodic shear layers occur naturally in a wide range of applications from engineering to physiology. Transition to turbulence in such flows is of practical interest and there have been several papers dealing with the stability of flows composed of a steady component plus an oscillatory part with zero mean. In such flows a possible instability mechanism is associated with the mean component so that the stability of the flow can be examined using some sort of perturbation-type analysis. This strategy fails when the mean part of the flow is small compared with the oscillatory component which, of course, includes the case when the mean part is precisely zero.

This difficulty with analytical studies has meant that the stability of purely oscillatory flows has relied on various numerical methods. Until very recently such techniques have only ever predicted that the flow is stable, even though experiments suggest that they do become unstable at high enough speeds. In this talk I shall expand on this discrepancy with emphasis on the particular case of the so-called flat Stokes layer. This flow, which is generated in a deep layer of incompressible fluid lying above a flat plate which is oscillated in its own plane, represents one of the few exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. We show theoretically that the flow does become unstable to waves which propagate relative to the basic motion although the theory predicts that this occurs much later than has been found in experiments. Reasons for this discrepancy are examined by reference to calculations for oscillatory flows in pipes and channels. Finally, we propose some new experiments that might reduce this disagreement between the theoretical predictions of instability and practical realisations of breakdown in oscillatory flows.

The Theory of Inconsistency arose historically from a number of sources, such as the semantic paradoxes including The Liar and the set-theoretic paradoxes including Russell's. But these sources are rather too closely connected with Foundationalism: the view that mathematics has a foundation such as logic or set theory or category theory etc. It soon became apparent that inconsistent mathematical structures are of interest in their own right and do not depend on the existence of foundations. This paper will survey some of the results in inconsistent mathematics and discuss the bearing on various philosophical positions including Platonism, Logicism, Hilbert's Formalism, and Brouwer's Intuitionism.

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 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.

Stirring and mixing of fluids occurs everywhere, from adding milk to a cup of coffee, right through to industrial-scale chemical blending. So why stir in the first place? Is it possible to do it badly? And how can you make sure you do it effectively? I will attempt to answer these questions using a few thought experiments, some dynamical systems theory and a little topology.

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.

String Theory has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on many areas of mathematics and vice versa. In this talk I want to address some relatively recent developments. In particular I will argue, following Witten and others, that D-brane charges take values in the K-theory of spacetime, rather than in integral cohomology as one might have expected. I will also explore the mathematical consequences of a particular symmetry, called T-duality, in this context. I will give an intuitive introduction into D-branes and K-theory. No prior knowledge about either String Theory, D-branes or K-theory is required.

Enrico Betti (1823-1892) is recognized in the mathematics community for his pioneering contributions to topology. An equally important contribution is his formulation of the reciprocity theorem applicable to elastic bodies that satisfy the classical equations of linear elasticity. Although James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) proposed a law of reciprocal displacements and rotations in 1864, the contribution of Betti is acknowledged for its underlying formal mathematical basis and generality. The purpose of this lecture is to illustrate how Betti's reciprocal theorem can be used to full advantage to develop compact analytical results for certain contact and inclusion problems in the classical theory of elasticity. Inclusion problems are encountered in number of areas in applied mechanics ranging from composite materials to geomechanics. In composite materials, the inclusion represents an inhomogeneity that is introduced to increase either the strength or the deformability characteristics of resulting material. In geomechanics, the inclusion represents a constructed material region, such as a ground anchor, that is introduced to provide load transfer from structural systems. Similarly, contact problems have applications to the modelling of the behaviour of indentors used in materials testing to the study of foundations used to distribute loads transmitted from structures. In the study of conventional problems the inclusions and the contact regions are directly loaded and this makes their analysis quite straightforward. When the interaction is induced by loads that are placed exterior to the indentor or inclusion, the direct analysis of the problem becomes inordinately complicated both in terns of formulation of the integral equations and their numerical solution. It is shown by a set of selected examples that the application of Betti's reciprocal theorem leads to the development of exact closed form solutions to what would otherwise be approximate solutions achievable only through the numerical solution of a set of coupled integral equations.

The standard diffusion equation is obtained by Einstein's method and its generalisation, Fokker-Plank-Kolmogorov-Feller theory. The time between jumps in Einstein derivation is constant.

We discuss random walks with residence time distribution, which occurs for flows of solutes and suspensions/colloids in porous media, CO2 sequestration in coal mines, several processes in chemical, petroleum and environmental engineering. The rigorous application of the Einstein's method results in new equation, containing the time and the mixed dispersion terms expressing the dispersion of the particle time steps.

Usually, adding the second time derivative results in additional initial data. For the equation derived, the condition of limited solution when time tends to infinity provides with uniqueness of the Caushy problem solution.

The solution of the pulse injection problem describing a common tracer injection experiment is studied in greater detail. The new theory predicts delay of the maximum of the tracer, compared to the velocity of the flow, while its forward "tail" contains much more particles than in the solution of the classical parabolic (advection-dispersion) equation. This is in agreement with the experimental observations and predictions of the direct simulation.

The theory of partial differential equations can say much about generic bifurcations from spatially homogeneous steady states, but relatively little about generic bifurcations from unimodal steady states. In many applications, spatially homogeneous steady states correspond to low-energy physical states that are destabilized as energy is fed into the system, and in these cases standard PDE theory can yield some impressive and elegant results. However, for many macroscopic biological systems such results are less useful because low-energy states do not hold the same priviledged position as they do in physical and chemical systems. For example, speciation -- the evolutionary process by which new species are formed -- can be seen as the destabilization of a unimodal density distribution over phenotype space. Given the diversity of species and environments, generic results are clearly needed, but cannot be gained from PDE theory. Indeed, such questions cannot even be adequately formulated in terms of PDEs. In this talk I will introduce 'Pod Systems' which can provide an answer to the question; 'What happens, generically, when a unimodal steady state loses stability?' In the pod system formalization, the answer involves elements of equivariant bifurcation theory and suggests that new species can arise as the result of broken symmetries.

The talk will be the occasion to take a few minutes to describe the situation of math education in France and in Europe, to motivate the interest of the lecturer in trying to bring back rigorous proofs in integration theory. The remaining 45 minutes will be devoted to explaining the basics of Henstock-Kurzweil integration theory, which, although not a response to education problems, is a modern and elementary approach of a very strong extension of the Riemann integral, providing easy access to several fundamental results of Lebesgue theory (monotone convergence theorem, existence of Lebesgue measure, etc.).

The Chern-Weil homomorphism gives a geometric method for calculating characteristic classes for principal bundles. In infinite dimensions, however, the standard theory fails due to analytical problems. In this talk I shall give a geometric method for calculating characteristic classes for principal bundle with structure group the loop group of a compact group which side-steps these complications. This theory is inspired in some sense by results on the string class (a certain cohomology class on the base of a loop group bundle) which I shall outline.

In 1970, two independent studies (by Wunsch and Phillips) of the behaviour of a linear density-stratified viscous fluid in a closed container demonstrated a slow flow can be generated simply due to the container having a sloping boundary surface This remarkable motion is generated as a result of the curvature of the lines of constant density near any sloping surface, which in turn enables a zero normal-flux condition on the density to be satisfied along that boundary. When the Rayleigh number is large (or equivalently Wunsch's parameter $R$ is small) this motion is concentrated in the near vicinity of the sloping surface, in a thin `buoyancy layer' that has many similarities to an Ekman layer in a rotating fluid.

A number of studies have since considered the consequences of this type of `diffusively-driven' flow in a semi-infinite domain, including in the deep ocean and with turbulent effects included. More recently, Page & Johnson (2008) described a steady linear theory for the broader-scale mass recirculation in a closed container and demonstrated that, unlike in previous studies, it is possible for the buoyancy layer to entrain fluid from that recirculation. That work has since been extended (Page & Johnson, 2009) to the nonlinear regime of the problem and some of the similarities to and differences from the linear case will be described in this talk. Simple and elegant analytical solutions in the limit as $R \to 0$ still exist in some situations, and they will be compared with numerical simulations in a tilted square container at small values of $R$. Further work on both the unsteady flow properties and the flow for other geometrical configurations will also be described.

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.

Vector spaces and linear functions form our paradigmatic monoidal category. The concepts underpinning linear algebra admit definitions, operations and constructions with analogues in many other parts of mathematics. We shall see how to generalize much of linear algebra to the context of monoidal categories. Traditional examples of such categories are obtained by replacing vector spaces by linear representations of a given compact group or by sheaves of vector spaces. More recent examples come from low-dimensional topology, in particular, from knot theory where the linear functions are replaced by braids or tangles. These geometric monoidal categories are often free in an appropriate sense, a fact that can be used to obtain algebraic invariants for manifolds.

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 unsteady flow of a viscous fluid through a curved pipe is a widely occuring and well studied problem. The stability of such flows, however, has largely been overlooked; this is in marked contrast to flow through a straight-pipe, examination of which forms a cornerstone of hydrodynamic stability theory. Importantly, however, flow through a curved pipe exhibits an array of flow structures that are simply not present in the zero curvature limit, and it is natural to expect these to substantially impact upon the flow's stability. By considering two very different kinds of flows through a curved pipe, we illustrate that this can indeed be the case.

The growth processes of human babies have been studied sufficiently in scientific fields, but there have still been many issues about the developments of human fetus which are not clarified. The aim of this research is to investigate the developing process of systemic organs of human fetuses based on the data set of measurements of fetus's bodies and organs. Specifically, this talk is concerned with giving a mathematical understanding for the harmonized developments of the organs of human fetuses. The method to evaluate such harmonies is proposed by the use of the maximal dilatation appeared in the theory of quasi-conformal mapping.

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.

In a series of three papers from 2002-2003, Grigori Perelman gave a spectacular proof of the Poincare Conjecture (every smooth compact simply connected three-dimensional manifold is topologically isomorphic to a sphere), one of the most famous open problems in mathematics (and one of the seven Clay Millennium Prize Problems worth a million dollars each), by developing several new groundbreaking advances in Hamilton's theory of Ricci flow on manifolds. In this talk I describe in broad detail how the proof proceeds, and briefly discuss some of the key turning points in the argument. About the speaker: Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. He has been a professor of mathematics at UCLA since 1999, having completed his PhD under Elias Stein at Princeton in 1996. Tao's areas of research include harmonic analysis, PDE, combinatorics, and number theory. He has received a number of awards, including the Salem Prize in 2000, the Bochner Prize in 2002, the Fields Medal and SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2006, and the MacArthur Fellowship and Ostrowski Prize in 2007. Terence Tao also currently holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences (Corresponding Member).

Making decisions when outcomes are uncertain is a common problem we all face. In this talk I will outline some recent developments on this question from the mathematics of finance-the theory of risk measures and nonlinear expectations. I will also talk about how decisions are currently made in the finance industry, and how some simple mathematics can show where these systems are open to abuse.

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.

This paper considers a model for asset pricing in a world where the randomness is modeled by a Markov chain rather than Brownian motion. In this paper we develop a theory of optimal stopping and related variational inequalities for American options in this model. A version of Saigal's Lemma is established and numerical algorithms developed. This is a joint work with John van der Hoek.

The caloron transform is a `fake' dimensional reduction which transforms a G-bundle over certain manifolds to a loop group of G bundle over a manifold of one lower dimension. This talk will review the caloron transform and show how it can be best understood using the language of pseudo-isomorphisms from category theory as well as considering its application to Bogomolny monopoles and string structures.

I will discuss two problems in porous media flow.

On a tropical island, fresh water may sit in the soil beneath the ground, floating on the ocean's salt water. This water is a valuable resource for the inhabitants, but requires sufficient rainfall to recharge the lens. In this paper, Green's functions are used to derive an integral equation to satisfy all of the conditions except those on the interfaces, which are then solved for numerically. Conditions under which the lens can be maintained will be described. This is work I did with an Honours student, Sue Chen, who is now at U. Melbourne.

In the second problem, I will discuss an "exact" solution to a problem in withdrawal from an unconfined aquifer. The problem formulation gives rise to a singular integral equation that can be solved using a nice orthogonality result I first met in airfoil theory. This is work with Hong Zhang from Griffith University.

High on a mathematician's to-do list is classifying objects and structures that arise in mathematics. We see patterns in things and want to know what other sorts of things behave similarly. This poses several problems. How can you tell when two seemingly different mathematical objects are the same? Can you even tell when two seemingly similar mathematical objects are the same? In fact, what does "the same" even mean? How can you tell if two things are the same when you can't even see them! In this talk, we will take a walk through some areas of maths known as algebraic topology and category theory and I will show you some of the ways mathematicians have devised to tell when two things are "the same".

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.

A basic operation in calculus of variations is the Euler-Lagrange variational derivative, whose kernel determines the extremals of functionals. There exists a natural resolution of this operator, called the variational complex. In this talk, I shall explain how to use tools from the theory of vertex algebras to explicitly construct the variational complex. This also provides a very convenient language for classifying and constructing integrable Hamiltonian evolution equations.

Research into two-dimensional laminar fluid mixing has enjoyed a renaissance in the last decade since the realisation that the Thurston–Nielsen theory of surface homeomorphisms can assist in designing efficient "topologically chaotic" batch mixers. In this talk I will survey some tools used in topological fluid kinematics, including braid groups, train-tracks, dynamical systems and topological index formulae. I will then make some speculations about topological chaos in three dimensions.

I will describe a family of algebras of tangles (which give rise to link invariants following the methods of Reshetikhin-Turaev and Jones) and describe some aspects of their structure and their representation theory. The main goal will be to explain how to use universal Verma modules for the symplectic group to compute the representation theory of affine BMW (Birman-Murakami-Wenzl) algebras.

This title is taken from the novel of Hermann Hesse. In joint work with A. Kleshchev, we were amused to discover a glass bead game for constructing representations of quiver Hecke algebras (algebras recently defined by Khovanov-Lauda and Rouquier whose representation theory categorifies quantum groups of Kac-Moody Lie algebras). In fact, the glass bead game is tantalizingly simple, and may soon be marketed in your local toy store. I will explain how this game works, and some of the fascinating numerology that appears in the scoring of the plays.

Quillen introduced a $K'_0$-theory for possibly nonunital rings and showed that it agrees with the usual algebraic $K_0$-theory if the ring is unital. We shall introduce higher $K'$-groups for $k$-algebras, where $k$ is a field, and discuss some elementary properties of this theory. We shall also show that for stable $C*$-algebras the higher $K'$-theory agrees with the topological $K$-theory. If time permits we shall explain how this provides a formalism to treat topological $\mathbb{T}$-dualities via Kasparov's bivariant $K$-theory.

The two envelope problem is a long standing paradox in probability theory. Although its formulation has elements in common with the celebrated Monty Hall problem, the underlying paradox is apparently far more subtle. In this talk, the problem will be explained and various aspects of the paradox will be discussed. Connections to Bayesian inference and other areas of statistics will be explored.

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

This lecture is a personal (and partly historical) overview in non-technical terms of the topic described in the title, from first year linear algebra to von Neumann algebras.

Simplicial sets became popular in the 1950s as a combinatorial way to study the homotopy theory of topological spaces. They are more robust than the older notion of simplicial complexes, which were introduced for the same purpose. In this talk, which will be as introductory as possible, we will review some classical functors arising in the theory of simplicial sets, some well-known, some not-so-well-known. We will re-examine the proof of an old theorem of Kan in light of these functors. We will try to keep all jargon to a minimum.

In my previous talk I introduced a functor from the category of k-algebras (k field) to abelian groups, called KQ-theory. In this talk I will explain its relationship with topological (homological) T-dualities and twisted K-theory.

For each automorphism, $\alpha$, of the locally compact group $G$ there is a corresponding {\sl contraction subgroup\/}, $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$, which is the set of $x\in G$ such that $\alpha^n(x)$ converges to the identity as $n\to \infty$. Contractions subgroups are important in representation theory, through the Mautner phenomenon, and in the study of convolution semigroups. If $G$ is a Lie group, then $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$ is automatically closed, can be described in terms of eigenvalues of $\hbox{ad}(\alpha)$, and is nilpotent. Since any connected group may be approximated by Lie groups, contraction subgroups of connected groups are thus well understood. Following a general introduction, the talk will focus on contraction subgroups of totally disconnected groups. A criterion for non-triviality of $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$ will be described (joint work with U.~Baumgartner) and a structure theorem for $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$ when it is closed will be presented (joint with H.~Gl\"oeckner).

Locally compact groups occur in many branches of mathematics. Their study falls into two cases: connected groups, which occur as automorphisms of smooth structures such as spheres for example; and totally disconnected groups, which occur as automorphisms of discrete structures such as trees. The talk will give an overview of the currently developing structure theory of totally disconnected locally compact groups. Techniques for analysing totally disconnected groups will be described that correspond to the familiar Lie group methods used to treat connected groups. These techniques played an essential role in the recent solution of a problem raised by R. Zimmer and G. Margulis concerning commensurated subgroups of arithmetic groups.

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/

In part I of this talk (JC seminar May 2008) we presented motivation and the basic definitions for building homotopy theory into an arbitrary category by introducing the notion of (higher) stacks. In part II we consider a specific example on the category of schemes to illustrate how the machinery works in practice. It will lead us into motivic territory (if we like it or not).

Horizontal convecton refers to flows driven by uneven heating on a horizontal forcing boundary. Flows exhibiting these characteristics are prevalent in nature, and include the North-South Hadley circulation within the atmosphere between warmer and more temperate latitudes, as well as ocean currents driven by non-uniform heating via solar radiation.

Here a model for these generic convection flows is established featuring a rectangular enclosure, insulated on the side and top walls, and driven by a linear temperature gradient applied along the bottom wall. Rayleigh number dependence of heat transfer through the forcing boundary is computed and compared with theory. Attention is given to transitions in the flow, including the development of unsteady flow and three-dimensional flow: the effect of these transitions on the Nusselt-Rayleigh number scaling exponents is described.

Let I(p,v) be Bourdon's building, the unique simply-connected 2-complex such that all 2-cells are regular right-angled hyperbolic p-gons, and the link at each vertex is the complete bipartite graph K_{v,v}. We investigate and mostly determine the set of triples (p,v,g) for which there is a discrete group acting on I(p,v) so that the quotient is a compact orientable surface of genus g. Surprisingly, the existence of such a quotient depends upon the value of v. The remaining cases lead to open questions in tessellations of surfaces and in number theory. We use elementary group theory, combinatorics, algebraic topology and number theory. This is joint work with David Futer.

Woronowicz initiated the study of quantum groups using C*-algebras. His framework enabled him to deal with compact (linear) quantum groups. In this talk we shall introduce a notion of quantum groups that can handle infinite dimensional examples like SU(\infty). We shall also study some quantum homogeneous spaces associated to this group and compute their K-theory groups. This is joint work with V. Mathai.

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.

A key question in mathematical finance is: given a future random payoff X, what is its value today? If X represents a loss, one can ask how risky is X. To mitigate risk it must be modelled and quantified. The finance industry has used Value-at-Risk and conditional Value-at-Risk as measures. However, these measures are not time consistent and Value-at-Risk can penalize diversification. A modern theory of risk measures is being developed which is related to solutions of backward stochastic differential equations in continuous time and stochastic difference equations in discrete time. I first review risk measures used in mathematical finance, including static and dynamic risk measures. I recall results relating to backward stochastic difference equations (BSDEs) associated with a single jump process. Then I evaluate some numerical examples of the solutions of the backward stochastic difference equations and related risk measures. These concepts are new. I hope the examples will indicate how they might be used.

Standard analytical solutions to elliptic boundary value problems on asymmetric domains are rarely, if ever, obtainable. Several years ago I proposed a solution technique to cope with such complicated domains. It involves the embedding of the original domain into one with simple boundaries where the classical eigenfunction solution approach can be used. The solution in the larger domain, when restricted to the original domain is then the solution of the original boundary value problem. In this talk I will present supporting theory for this idea, some numerical results for the particular case of the Laplace equation and the Stokes flow equations in two-dimensions and discuss advantages and limitations of the proposal.

The Kontsevich Swiss-Cheese conjecture is a deep generalization of the Deligne conjecture on Hochschild cochains which plays an important role in the deformation quantization theory. Categorification is a method of thinking about mathematics by replacing set theoretical concepts by some higher dimensional objects. Categorification is somewhat of an art because there is no exact recipe for doing this. It is, however, a very powerful method of understanding (and producing) many deep results starting from simple facts we learned as undergraduate students. In my talk I will explain how Kontsevich Swiss-Cheese conjecture can be easily understood as a special case of categorification of a very familiar statement: an action of a group G (more generally, a monoid) on a set X is the same as group homomorphism from G to the group of automorphisms of X (monoid of endomorphisms of X in the case of a monoid action).

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 correspondence principle in quantum mechanics is concerned with the relation between a mechanical system and its quantization. When the mechanical system are relatively orderly ("integrable"), then this relation is well understood. However when the system is chaotic much less is understood. The key features already appear and are well illustrated in the simplest systems which we will review. For chaotic systems defined number-theoretically, much more is understood and the basic problems are connected with central questions in number theory. The Mahler lectures are a biennial activity organised by the Australian Mathematical Society with the assistance of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute.

For steady flows, the boundaries of Lagrangian Coherent Structures are segments of manifolds connected to fixed points. In the general unsteady situation, these boundaries are time-varying manifolds of hyperbolic trajectories. Locating these boundaries, and attempting to meaningfully quantify fluid flux across them, is difficult since they are moving with time. This talk uses a newly developed tangential movement theory to locate these boundaries in nearly-steady compressible flows.

According to a conjecture from the 90's, globally regular, static, spherically symmetric (i.e. particle-like) solutions with nonzero total magnetic charge are not expected to exist in Einstein-Yang-Mills theory. In this talk, I will describe recent work done in collaboration with M. Fisher where we establish the validity of this conjecture under certain restrictions on the residual gauge group. Of particular interest is that our non-existence results apply to the most widely studied models with Abelian residual groups.

Einstein's general relativity is presently the most accurate theory of gravity. To completely determine the gravitational field, the Einstein field equations must be solved. These equations are extremely complex and outside of a small set of idealized situations, they are impossible to solve directly. However, to make physical predictions or understand physical phenomena, it is often enough to find approximate solutions that are governed by a simpler set of equations. For example, Newtonian gravity approximates general relativity very well in regimes where the typical velocity of the gravitating matter is small compared to the speed of light. Indeed, Newtonian gravity successfully explains much of the behaviour of our solar system and is a simpler theory of gravity. However, for many situations of interest ranging from binary star systems to GPS satellites, the Newtonian approximation is not accurate enough; general relativistic effects must be included. This desire to include relativistic corrections to Newtonian gravity lead to the development of the post-Newtonian expansions.

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.

Morava's extraordinary K-theories K(n) are a family of generalized cohomology theories which behave in some ways like K-theory (indeed, K(1) is mod 2 K-theory). Their construction exploits Quillen's description of cobordism in terms of formal group laws and Lubin-Tate's methods in class field theory for constructing abelian extensions of number fields. Constructed from homotopy-theoretic methods, they do not admit a geometric description (like deRham cohomology, K-theory, or cobordism), but are nonetheless subtle, computable invariants of topological spaces. In this talk, I will give an introduction to these theories, and explain how it is possible to define an analogue of twisted K-theory in this setting. Traditionally, K-theory is twisted by a three-dimensional cohomology class; in this case, K(n) admits twists by (n+2)-dimensional classes. This work is joint with Hisham Sati.

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.

In physics T-duality is a phenomenon which relates certain types of string theories to one another. From a topological point of view, one can view string theory as a duality between line bundles carrying a degree three cohomology class (the H-flux). In this talk we will use bundle gerbes to give a geometric realisation of the H-flux and explain how to construct the T-dual of a line bundle together with its T-dual bundle gerbe.

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.

In physics T-duality is a phenomenon which relates certain types of string theories to one another. From a topological point of view, one can view string theory as a duality between line bundles carrying a degree three cohomology class (the H-flux). In this talk we will use bundle gerbes to give a geometric realisation of the H-flux and explain how to construct the T-dual of a line bundle together with its T-dual bundle gerbe.

The Dirac operator was introduced by Paul Dirac in 1928 as the formal square root of the D'Alembert operator. Thirty years later it was rediscovered in Euclidean signature by Atiyah and Singer in their seminal work on index theory. In this talk I will describe efforts to construct a Dirac type operator on the classifying space for odd complex K-theory. Ultimately the aim is to produce a projective family of Fredholm operators realising elements in twisted K-theory of a certain moduli stack.

This talk is a continuation of my talk last August. I will discuss the recently-obtained answers to the open questions I described then.

The problem of variables separation in the linear stability equations, which govern the disturbance behavior in viscous incompressible fluid flows, is discussed. Stability of some unsteady nonparallel three-dimensional flows (exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations) is studied via separation of variables using a semi-analytical, semi-numerical approach. In this approach, a solution with separated variables is defined in a new coordinate system which is sought together with the solution form. As the result, the linear stability problems are reduced to eigenvalue problems for ordinary differential equations which can be solved numerically. In some specific cases, the eigenvalue problems can be solved analytically. Those unique examples of exact (explicit) solution of the nonparallel unsteady flow stability problems provide a very useful test for methods used in the hydrodynamic stability theory. Exact solutions of the stability problems for some stagnation-type flows are presented.

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.

Space and time together constitute one of the most basic elements of physical reality. Since Einstein spacetime has become an active participant in the dynamics of the gravitational force. However, our notion of a quantum spacetime is still rudimentary. String theory, building upon hints provided from the physics of black holes, seems to be suggesting a very novel, "holographic" picture of what quantum spacetime might be. This relies on some very surprising connections of gravity with quantum field theories (which provide the framework for the description of the other fundamental interactions of nature). In this talk, I will try and convey some of the flavour of these connections as well as its significance.

Lecture series by Jonathan Rosenberg (University of Maryland). There will be additional talks by other invited speakers.

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.

The Faddeev-Mickelsson-Shatashvili anomaly arises in the quantisation of fermions interacting with external gauge potentials. Mathematically, it can be described as a certain lifting problem for an extension of groups. The theory of bundle gerbes is very useful for studying lifting problems, however it only applies in the case of a central extension whereas in the study of the FMS anomaly the relevant extension is non-central. In this talk I will explain how to describe this anomaly indirectly using bundle gerbes and how to use a generalisation of bundle gerbes to describe the (non-central) lifting problem directly. This is joint work with Pedram Hekmati, Michael Murray and Danny Stevenson.

I will attempt to explain what a totally disconnected, locally compact group is, and then describe some new work with George Willis on an attempt to create new examples based on Baumslag-Solitar groups, which are well known, tried and tested examples/counterexamples in geometric/combinatorial group theory. I will describe how to compute invariants of scale and flat rank for these groups.

I will give a brief introduction to the theory of self-similar groups, focusing on a couple of pertinent examples: Grigorchuk's group of intermediate growth, and the basilica group.

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.

Atiyah-Patodi-Singer proved an index theorem for non-local boundary conditions in the 1970's that has been widely used in mathematics and mathematical physics. A key application of their theory gives the index theorem for signature operators on oriented manifolds with boundary. As a consequence, they defined certain secondary invariants that were metric independent. I will discuss some recent work with Benameur where we extend the APS theory to signature operators twisted by an odd degree closed differential form, and study the corresponding secondary invariants.

In financial derivatives pricing theory, it is very common to change the probability measure from historical measure "real world" into a Risk-Neutral measure as a development of the non arbitrage condition. Girsanov theorem is the most known example of this technique and is used when prices randomness is modelled by Brownian motions. Other genuine candidates for modelling market randomness that have proved efficiency in recent literature are jump process, so how can a change of measure be performed for such processes? This talk will address this question by introducing the non arbitrage condition, discussing Girsanov theorem for diffusion and jump processes and presenting a concrete example.

Representation theory is one of the oldest areas of algebra, but many basic questions in it are still unanswered. This is especially true in the modular case, where one considers vector spaces over a field F of positive characteristic; typically, complications arise for particular small values of the characteristic. For example, from a vector space V one can construct the symmetric square S^2(V), which is one easy example of a representation of the group GL(V). One would like to say that this representation is irreducible, but that statement is not always true: if F has characteristic 2, there is a nontrivial invariant subspace. Even for GL(V), we do not know the dimensions of all irreducible representations in all characteristics. In this talk, I will introduce some of the main ideas of geometric modular representation theory, a more recent approach which is making progress on some of these old problems. Essentially, the strategy is to re-formulate everything in terms of homology of various topological spaces, where F appears only as the field of coefficients and the spaces themselves are independent of F; thus, the modular anomalies in representation theory arise because homology with modular coefficients is detecting something about the topology that rational coefficients do not. In practice, the spaces are usually varieties over the complex numbers, and homology is replaced by intersection cohomology to take into account the singularities of these varieties.

In many modelling problems in mathematics and physics, a standard challenge is dealing with several repeated instances of a system under study. If linear transformations are involved, then the machinery of tensor products steps in, and it is the job of group theory to control how the relevant symmetries lift from a single system, to having many copies. At the level of group characters, the construction which does this is called PLETHYSM. In this talk all this will be contextualised via two case studies: entanglement invariants for multipartite quantum systems, and Markov invariants for tree reconstruction in molecular phylogenetics. By the end of the talk, listeners will have understood why Alice, Bob and Charlie love Cayley's hyperdeterminant, and they will know why the three squangles -- polynomial beasts of degree 5 in 256 variables, with a modest 50,000 terms or so -- can tell us a lot about quartet trees!

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.

Quantales were introduced by Mulvey in 1986 in the context of non-commutative topology with the aim of providing a concrete non-commutative framework for the foundations of quantum mechanics. Since then quantales found applications in other areas as well, among others in the work of Flagg. Flagg considers certain special quantales, called value quantales, that are desigend to capture the essential properties of ([0,\infty],\le,+) that are relevant for analysis. The result is a well behaved theory of value quantale enriched metric spaces. I will introduce the notion of quantales as if they were desigend for just this purpose, review most of the known results (since there are not too many), and address a some new results, conjectures, and questions.

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).

When a complex manifold is defined by polynomial equations, its cohomology groups inherit extra structure. This was discovered by Hodge in the 1920s and 30s. When the defining polynomials have rational coefficients, there is some additional, arithmetic structure on the cohomology. This was discovered by Grothendieck and others in the 1960s. But here the situation is still quite mysterious because each cohomology group has infinitely many different arithmetic structures and while they are not directly comparable, they share many properties---with each other and with the Hodge structure. All written accounts of this that I'm aware of treat arbitrary varieties. They are beautifully abstract and non-explicit. In this talk, I'll take the opposite approach and try to give a flavour of the subject by working out a perhaps the simplest nontrivial example, the cohomology of C* relative to a subset of two points, in beautifully concrete and explicit detail. Here the common motif is the logarithm. In Hodge theory, it is realised as the complex logarithm; in the crystalline theory, it's as the p-adic logarithm; and in the etale theory, it's as Kummer theory. I'll assume you have some familiarity with usual, singular cohomology of topological spaces, but I won't assume that you know anything about these non-topological cohomology theories.

The drawing of viscous threads is important in a wide range of industrial applications and is a primary manufacturing process in the optical fiber and textile industries. Most of the materials used in these processes have viscosities that vary extremely strongly with temperature. We investigate the role played by viscous heating in the drawing of viscous threads. Usually, the effects of viscous heating and inertia are neglected because the parameters that characterize them are typically very small. However, by performing a detailed theoretical analysis we surprisingly show that even very small amounts of viscous heating can lead to a runaway phenomena. On the other hand, inertia prevents runaway, and the interplay between viscous heating and inertia results in very complicated dynamics for the system. Even more surprisingly, in the absence of viscous heating, we find that a new type of instability can occur when a thread is heated by a radiative heat source. By analyzing an asymptotic limit of the Navier-Stokes equation we provide a theory that describes the nature of this instability and explains the seemingly counterintuitive behavior.

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.

This aims to be an example of an exemplary talk on examples of celebrated counterexamples in mathematics. A famous example, for example, is Euler's counterexample to Fermat's conjecture in number theory.

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.

The ancient Chinese used it, the Celts had this skill in spades, it was a big skill of seafarers and pirates, and even now we need it if only to be able to wear shoes! This talk will be about Knot Theory. Knot theory has a colourful and interesting past and I will touch on the why, the what and the when of knots in mathematics. I shall also discuss the major problems concerning knots including the different methods of classification of knots, the unresolved questions about knots, and why have they even been studied. It will be a thorough immersion that will leave you knotted!

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.

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 an example of an application of supermanifold theory to physics, i.e., how to "superize" the moduli space of instantons on a 4-fold and use it to give a description of the BRST transformations, to compute the "supermeasure" of the moduli space, and the Nekrasov partition function.

For each natural number d, the space of rational maps of degree d on the Riemann sphere has the structure of a complex manifold. The topology of these manifolds has been extensively studied. The recent development of Oka theory raises some new and interesting questions about their complex structure. We apply geometric invariant theory to the degree 3 case, studying a double action of the Mobius group on the space of cubic rational maps. We show that the categorical quotient is C, and that the space of cubic rational maps enjoys the holomorphic flexibility properties of strong dominability and C-connectedness.

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.

Dynamo action is the process by which magnetic fields in astrophysical bodies (and recently, laboratory fluids) are maintained against resistive losses by Faraday induction. For many years a favoured model of this process, known as mean-field electrodynamics, has been widely used to produce tractable models. I shall present a critique of this theory and contrast it it with another dynamo process (small scale dynamo action) that does not, unlike mean-field electrodynamics, rely on broken reflection symmetry or scale separation. Finally, I shall talk about very recent rigorous results concerning the Archontis dynamo, in which the magnetic and velocity fields are closely aligned.

We review Mathai-Wu's recent extension of Ray-Singer analytic torsion to supercomplexes. We explore some new results relating these two torsions, and how we can apply the adiabatic spectral sequence due to Forman and Farber's analytic deformation theory to compute some spectral invariants of the complexes involved, answering some questions that were posed in Mathai-Wu's paper.

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.

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.

We derive extended Lorentz transformations between inertial frames for relative velocities greater than the speed of light, and which are complementary to the Lorentz transformation giving rise to the Einstein special theory of relativity. The new transformations arise from the same mathematical framework as the Lorentz transformation, displaying singular behaviour when the relative velocity approaches the speed of light and generating the same addition law for velocities, but most importantly, do not involve the need to introduce imaginary masses or complicated physics to provide well-defined expressions.

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).

Groups of gauge transformations in quantum field theory are typically extended by a 2-cocycle with values in a certain abelian group due to chiral symmetry breaking. For these extensions there exist a global explicit construction since the 1980's. I shall study the higher group cocycles following a recent paper by F. Wagemann and C. Wockel, but extending to the transformation groupoid setting (motivated by QFT) and discussing potential obstructions in the construction due to a nonvanishing of low dimensional homology groups of the gauge group. The resolution of the obstruction is obtained by an application of the Cheeger-Simons differential characters.

Harnack inequalities are an important tool in probability theory, analysis, and partial differential equations. The classical Harnack inequality is just the one you learned in your graduate complex analysis class, but there have been many extensions, to different spaces, such as manifolds, fractals, infinite graphs, and to various sorts of elliptic operators. A landmark result was that of Moser in 1961, where he proved the Harnack inequality for solutions to a class of partial differential equations. I will talk about the stability of Harnack inequalities. The main result says that if the Harnack inequality holds for an operator on a space, then the Harnack inequality will also hold for a large class of other operators on that same space. This provides a generalization of the result of Moser.

One very important application of number theory is the implementation of public key cryptosystems that we use today. I will introduce elementary number theory, Fermat's theorem and use these to explain how ElGamal encryption and digital signatures work.

I will review my recent work on integrability of M-brane configurations and the description of M-brane models in higher gauge theory. In particular, I will discuss categorified analogues of instantons and present superconformal equations of motion for the non-abelian tensor multiplet in six dimensions. The latter are derived from considering non-abelian gerbes on certain twistor spaces.

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.

Good question. Many functions encountered in practice can be well-approximated by a linear combination of Chebyshev polynomials, which then allows the use of some powerful numerical techniques. I will give a very brief overview of the theory behind some of these methods, demonstrate how they may be implemented using the MATLAB package known as Chebfun, and answer the question posed in the title along the way. No knowledge of approximation theory or MATLAB is required, however, you will need to accept the transliteration "Chebyshev".

Many mathematical and engineering problems have a multiscale nature. There are a vast of theories supporting multiscale modelling on infinite domain, such as homogenization theory and centre manifold theory. To date, there are little consideration of the correct boundary conditions to be used at the edge of macroscale model. In this seminar, I will present how to derive macroscale boundary conditions for the diffusion system.

In mathematical finance, as in many other fields where applied mathematics is a powerful tool, we assume that a model is good enough when it captures different sources of randomness affecting the quantity of interests, which in this case is the electricity prices. The power market is very different from other markets in terms of the randomness sources that can be observed in the prices feature and evolution. We start from suggesting a new model that simulates the electricity prices, this new model is constructed by adding a periodicity term, a jumps terms and a positives mean reverting term. The later term is driven by a non-observable Markov process. So in order to prices some financial product, we have to use some of the filtering theory to deal with the non-observable process, these techniques are gaining very much of interest from practitioners and researchers in the field of financial mathematics.

The notion of excitability was first introduced in an attempt to understand firing properties of neurons. It was Alan Hodgkin who identified three basic types (classes) of excitable axons (integrator, resonator and differentiator) distinguished by their different responses to injected steps of currents of various amplitudes. Pioneered by Rinzel and Ermentrout, bifurcation theory explains repetitive (tonic) firing patterns for adequate steady inputs in integrator (type I) and resonator (type II) neuronal models. In contrast, the dynamic behavior of differentiator (type III) neurons cannot be explained by standard dynamical systems theory. This third type of excitable neuron encodes a dynamic change in the input and leads naturally to a transient response of the neuron. In this talk, I will show that "canards" - peculiar mathematical creatures - are well suited to explain the nature of transient responses of neurons due to dynamic (smooth) inputs. I will apply this geometric theory to a simple driven FitzHugh-Nagumo/Morris-Lecar type neural model and to a more complicated neural model that describes paradoxical excitation due to propofol anesthesia.

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.

The theory of crystallographic groups acting cocompactly on Euclidean space can be extended and generalised in many different ways. For example, instead of studying discrete groups of Euclidean isometries, one can consider groups of isometries for indefinite inner products. These are the fundamental groups of compact flat pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. Still more generally, one might study group of affine transformation on n-space that are not required to preserve any bilinear form. Also, the condition of cocompactness can be dropped. In this talk, I will present some of the results obtained for these generalisations, and also discuss some of my own work on flat homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian spaces.

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.