Free boundary minimal hypersurfaces are critical points of the area functional in compact manifolds with boundary. In general, a free boundary minimal hypersurface may be improper, i.e., the interior of the hypersurface may touch the boundary of the ambient manifold. In this talk, we will present recent work on compactness and generic finiteness results for improper free boundary minimal hypersurfaces. This is joint work with Xin Zhou. 

Let Y --> X be a branched G-covering of curves over a field k.  The genus of X and the genus of Y are related by the famous Hurwitz genus formula.  When k is perfect of characteristic p and G is a p-group, one also has the Deuring-Shafarevich formula which relates the p-rank of X to that of Y.  In this talk, we will discuss our attempts to find a "motivic" generalization of the Deuring-Shafarevich formula by studying how the p-torsion group schemes of the Jacobians of X and Y are related.  In particular, we will explain how to promote the numerical Deuring-Shafarevich formula to an isomorphism of (etale) group schemes. This is ongoing joint work with Rachel Pries.

Linear programs (LPs) are, without any doubt, at the core of both the theory and the practice of mondern applied and computational Optimization (e.g., in discrete optimization LPs are used in practical computations using branch-and-bound, and in approximation algorithms, e.g., in rounding schemes). At the same time  Dantzig’s Simplex method is one of the most famous algorithms to solve LPs and SIAM elected it as one of the top 10 most influential algorithms of the 20th Century.

But despite its key importance, many simple easy-to-state mathematical properties of the Simplex method and its geometry remain unknown. The geometry of the simplex method is very much the convex-combinatorial geometry of polyhedra (e.g., cubes, simplices, etc). Perhaps the most famous geometric-combinatorial challenge is to determine a worst-case upper bound for the graph diameter of polyhedra.  Although a lot of progress has been made, today even for the most elementary textbook linear programs we remain ignorant as to what the exact diameter upper bounds are. In this talk, I will discuss this  geometric problem and present the key ideas for proving that the diameter of graphs of all network-flow polytopes satisfy the Hirsch linear bound. This is joint work with S. Borgwardt (Univ of Colorado) and E. Finhold (Fraunhofer Institut).

How complicated are countable torsion-free abelian groups? In particular, are they as complicated as countable graphs? In recent joint work with Shelah, we show it is consistent with ZFC that countable torsion-free abelian groups are $a \Delta^1_2$ complete; in other words, countable graphs can be encoded into them via an absolutely $\Delta^1_2$-map. I discuss this, and the related result: assuming large cardinals, it is independent of ZFC if there is an absolutely $\Delta^1_2$ reduction from Graphs to Colored Trees, which takes non-isomorphic graphs to non-biembeddable colored trees.