Special Year 2024-25: Algebraic and Geometric Combinatorics - Seminar

Special Year Seminar II

March 13, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm

The ring of symmetric functions has a linear basis of Schur functions $s_{\lambda}$ indexed by partitions $\lambda = (\lambda_1 \geq \lambda_2 \geq \ldots \geq 0 )$. Littlewood-Richardson coefficients $c^{\nu}_{\lambda, \mu}$ are the structure...

Special Year Seminar I

March 12, 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm

A remarkable result of Brändén and Huh tells us that volume polynomials of projective varieties are Lorentzian polynomials. The dual notion of covolume polynomials was introduced by Aluffi by considering the cohomology classes of subvarieties of a...

Special Year Seminar II

March 06, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm

K-theory arose in the 1950s from Grothendieck’s formulation of the Riemann-Roch theorem – that is, from attempts to calculate spaces of sections of vector bundles on a variety X via intersection theory on X.  An equivariant version was introduced...

Special Year Seminar I

March 05, 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm

K-theory arose in the 1950s from Grothendieck’s formulation of the Riemann-Roch theorem – that is, from attempts to calculate spaces of sections of vector bundles on a variety X via intersection theory on X.  An equivariant version was introduced...

Special Year Seminar I

February 26, 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm

In 1999, Pitman and Stanley introduced the polytope bearing their name along with a study of its faces, lattice points, and volume. This polytope is well-studied due to its connections to parking functions, lattice path matroids, generalized...

Special Year Seminar II

February 20, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm

I will start by a gentle introduction to operadic structures by drawing a parallel with classical associative structures. Then we will see how those structures can be applied to matroid theory via three examples: Chow rings, Orlik--Solomon algebras...

Special Year Seminar I

February 19, 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm

We consider the space of configurations of n points in the three-sphere $S^3$, some of which may coincide and some of which may not, up to the free and transitive action of $SU(2)$ on $S^3$. We prove that the cohomology ring with rational...

Special Year Seminar II

February 13, 2025 | 11:00am - 12:00pm

Algebraic statistics employs techniques in algebraic geometry, commutative algebra and combinatorics, to address problems in statistics and its applications. The philosophy of algebraic statistics is that statistical models are algebraic varieties...

Special Year Seminar II

February 13, 2025 | 10:00am - 11:00am

The theory of stable polynomials features a key notion called proper position, which generalizes interlacing of real roots to higher dimensions. I will show how a Lorentzian analog of proper position connects the structure of spaces of Lorentzian...

Special Year Seminar I

February 12, 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm

We will present recent applications of enumerative algebra to the study of stationary states in physics. Our point of departure are classical Newtonian differential equations with nonlinear potential. It turns out that the study of their stationary...