Video Lectures

Floer theory revisited

February 04, 2016

I will describe a formalism for (Lagrangian) Floer theory wherein the output is not a deformation of the cohomology ring, but of the Pontryagin algebra of based loops, or of the analogous algebra of based discs (with boundary on the Lagrangian). I...

video lecture

And Now for the Hard Part: China's Economic Adjustment After Three Miracle Decades

February 02, 2016

Michael Pettis

In this public lecture, Michael Pettis will explore China’s tumultuous stock market and its impact on the global economy. A Wall Street veteran at Bear Stearns and Credit Suisse First Boston, Pettis has the unique distinction of having been right...

video lecture

Profinite rigidity and flexibility for compact 3-manifold groups

February 02, 2016

Alan Reid

This talk will discuss the question: To what extent are the fundamental groups of compact 3-manifolds determined (amongst the fundamental groups of compact 3-manifolds) by their finite quotients. We will discuss work that provides a positive answer...

video lecture

Constant-round interactive-proofs for delegating computations (continued)

February 02, 2016

Ron Rothblum

We will continue Monday's talk on constant-round interactive proofs, going into more details of the full construction and its proof. We will also briefly recap Monday's talk so that it will be beneficial to those who cannot attend on Monday.

video lecture

The space of surface shapes, and some applications to biology

February 01, 2016

Joel Hass

The problem of comparing the shapes of different surfaces turns up in different guises in numerous fields. I will discuss a way to put a metric on the space of smooth Riemannian 2-spheres (i.e. shapes) that allows for comparing their geometric...

video lecture

Constant-round interactive-proofs for delegating computations

February 01, 2016

Ron Rothblum

Interactive proofs have had a dramatic impact on Complexity Theory and Cryptography. In particular, the celebrated IP=PSPACE Theorem [LFKN92,Shamir92] allows an all-powerful but untrusted prover to convince a polynomial-time verifier of the validity...

video lecture

Geometry of complex surface singularities and 3-manifolds

January 26, 2016

Walter Neumann

I will talk about bilipschitz geometry of complex algebraic sets, focusing on the local geometry in dimension 2 (complex surface singularities), where the topological classification has long been understood in terms of 3-manifolds, while the...

video lecture

Affine Springer fibers and representation theory

January 25, 2016

Cheng-Chiang Tsai

video lecture

Go-Betweens for Hitler

January 22, 2016

Karina Urbach

Despite all the charms of Downton Abbey, real-life aristocrats played a much darker role in the 1930s. With the British empire under threat and Bolshevism on the rise, many decided to support authoritarian and fascist regimes. Aristocratic women in...

video lecture

From symplectic geometry to combinatorics and back

January 21, 2016

Dan Cristofaro-Gardiner

A much studied combinatorial object associated to a polytope is its "Ehrhart function". This is typically studied for integral or rational polytopes. The first part of the talk will be about joint work with Li and Stanley extending this theory to...