MOPE, Gilligan, and TiVo

Speaker: 

Preceptor in Mathematics Matthew Leingang

Institution: 

Harvard University

Time: 

Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

I will be talking about three different pedagogical activities at Harvard in which I'm involved:

* An undergraduate course in multivariable mathematics for social sciences
* An online placement exam web application
* The A.L.M in Mathematics for Teaching program, serving area middle- and high-school teachers

Ideas for Enriching the UCI Undergraduate Program in Mathematics

Speaker: 

Lecturer Rachel Lehman

Institution: 

UCI

Time: 

Thursday, April 5, 2007 - 2:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

I will be discussing ideas to enrich the undergraduate program in mathematics at UCI. First, I will present ideas about standardizing the testing, and the content, of the large service courses such as Math 1A-B, 2A-B, as well as perhaps Math 7. This would involve the use of the state-of-the-art technology and the creation and administration of common exams. Second, I will discuss my thoughts about deepening the involvement of the mathematics department in community outreach programs. This would involve coordinating with programs such as CAMP and MESA. Third, I will present my ideas about enhancing our honors program and upper division courses, as well as enriching the undergraduate math club. And lastly, I will discuss ways of enticing students into doing more research. This would involve finding interested students, matching them with appropriate faculty, and working with programs such as UROP.

Training Math TAs and Tutors: Marrying content and process

Speaker: 

Assistant Professor Sarah Frey

Institution: 

University of Connecticut

Time: 

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 2:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

Often new teachers and tutors are given extensive training on general ideas and principles of good teaching. There may be little or no link between these ideas and the logistics of how to implement them within the courses they will be teaching/assisting.

In teaching a recent course for Quantitative Learning Tutors at the University of Connecticut, I sought to design a curriculum which closely ties good teaching/tutoring practices with specific science course content. I will present the learning goals for this course, specific
examples of projects and activities, and student learning assessment. This course contained a significant online component which will be outlined.Finally, I will describe how this curriculum can be applied to TA training
in mathematics.

Geometric Langlands conjecture as a Fourier transform

Speaker: 

Dmytro Arinkin

Institution: 

Caltech

Time: 

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - 2:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

The Langlands conjecture originated as a highly non-trivial generalization of the reciprocity laws in number theory. In my talk, I explain how after certain `geometrization', it becomes a statement about sets (`moduli spaces') of vector bundles on a Riemann surface. The result is a kind of Fourier transform relating sets of vector bundles and local systems on a Riemann surface.

This `geometric Langlands transform' can be used to motivate theorems and conjectures in such diverse areas of mathematics (and physics) as theory of Painleve equations, representation theory of loop groups, autoduality of Jacobians, and mirror symmetry. Some of the relations will be explained in the talk.

Recent progress on the L^{2}-critical, defocusing semilinear Schroedinger equation

Speaker: 

Postdoctoral Fellow Nikolas Tziraki

Institution: 

University of Toronto

Time: 

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

In this talk I will describe the progress that has been made so far concerning the existene of global strong solutions to the L^{2}-critical defocusing semilinear Schroedinger equation. A long standing conjecture in the area is the existence of a unique global strong L^{2} solution to the equation that in addition scatters to a free solution as time goes to infinity. I will demonstrate the proofs of partial results towards an attempt for a final resolution of this conjecture. I will concentrate on the low dimensions but give the flavor of the results in higher dimensions for general or spherically symmetric initial data in certain Sobolev spaces. Many authors have contributed to the theory of this equation. I will convey my personal involvement to the problem and the results that I have obtained recently. Part of my work is in collaboration with D. De Silva, N. Pavolovic, G. Staffilani, J. Colliander and M. Grillakis.

Multigrid Methods on Adaptive Grids

Speaker: 

Long Chen

Time: 

Friday, January 19, 2007 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

In this talk, we shall design and analyze additive and multiplicative multilevel methods on adapted grids obtained by newest vertex bisection. The analysis relies on a novel decomposition of newest vertex bisection which give a bridge to transfer results on multilevel methods from uniform grids to adaptive grids. Based on this space decomposition, we will present a unified approach to the multilevel methods for $H^1$, $H(\rm curl)$, and $H(\rm div)$ systems.

Henon family, homoclinic bifurcations, and celestial mechanics.

Speaker: 

Anton Gorodetski

Time: 

Monday, January 22, 2007 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

The modern theory of Dynamical Systems is in major part an offspring of celestial mechanics. Poincare proved non-integrability of the three body problem when he discovered the homoclinic picture. Alexeev explained the existence of the oscillatory motions (a planet approaches infinity but always returns to a bounded domain) in Sitnikov model (one of the restricted versions of the three body problem) using methods of hyperbolic dynamics.
We show that the structures related to the most recent results in the smooth dynamical systems (area preserving Henon family and homoclinic bifurcations, persistent tangencies, splitting of separatrices) also appear in the three body problem. In particular, we prove that in many cases the set of oscillatory motions has a full Hausdorff dimension.

Breaking the duality in the Return Times Theorem

Speaker: 

Ciprian Demeter

Time: 

Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

numbers greater than or equal to 1 such that 1/p+1/q is less than or equal to 1. The Return Times Theorem proved by Bourgain asserts the following: For each function f in L^{p}(X) there is a universal subset X_0 of X with measure 1, such that for each second dynamical system (Y,Sigma_2,m_2,S), each g in L^{q}(Y) and each x in X_0, the averages 1/N\sum_{n=1}^{N}f(T^nx)g(S^ny) converge for almost every y in Y.
We show how to break the duality in this theorem. More precisely, we prove that the result remains true if p is greater than 1 and q is greater than or equal to 2. We emphasize the strong connections between this result and the Carleson-Hunt theorem on the convergence of the Fourier series. We also prove similar results for the analog of Bourgain's theorem for signed averages, where no positive results were previously known. This is joint work with Michael Lacey, Terence Tao and Christoph Thiele.

Canonical K\"ahler metrics and the K\"ahler-Ricci flow

Speaker: 

Jian Song

Time: 

Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 2:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

The existence of K\"ahler-Einstein metrics on a compact K\"ahler manifold
of definite or vanishing first Chern class has been the subject of intense
study over the last few decades, following Yau's solution to Calabi's
conjecture. The K\"ahler-Ricci flow is the most canonical way to construct
K\"ahler-Einstein metrics. We define and prove the existence of a family
of new canonical metrics on projective manifolds with semi-ample canonical
bundle, where the first Chern class is semi-definite. Such a generalized
K\"ahler-Einstein metric can be constructed as the singular collapsing
limit by the K\"ahler-Ricci flow on minimal surfaces of Kodaira dimension
one. Some recent results of K\"ahler-Einstein metrics on K\"ahler
manifolds of positive first Chern class will also be discussed.

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