Title: Algebraic, geometric, and dynamical aspects of surfaces Abstract: Taffy pullers, lab stirrers, and paint mixers are complicated dynamical systems.  To any such system we can ascribe a real number, called the entropy, which describes the amount of mixing being achieved.  Which real numbers arise, and what do they say about the dynamics of the

TITLE:  Products of characters of the symmetric group ABSTRACT:  One of the main open problems in combinatorial representation theory of the symmetric group is to obtain a combinatorial interpretation for what are known as the Kronecker coefficients.  The Kronecker coefficients are obtained when we decompose the tensor product of two irreducible representations of the symmetric

Abstract: The National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences, more commonly known as the Math Alliance, grew out of an earlier NSF Funded project, The Alliance for the Production of African American PhDs in the Mathematical Sciences. In 2006 this project transformed itself to have a national scope, and it has been growing

Title: Maximizing the probability of visiting a set infinitely often for a countable state space Markov decision process Abstract: This is a joint work with Tomas Prieto-Rumeau. In this talk, we consider a Markov decision process with countable state space and Borel action space. We are interested in maximizing the probability that the controlled Markov

Title: Moving surfaces in geometry and physics Abstract: Moving surfaces are ubiquitous in many areas of mathematics and the applied sciences. In this talk I will first introduce some well-known geometric evolution equations, and then proceed to more complicated models that describe the motion of fluids and of materials that can undergo phase transitions.  

Title: High order numerical methods for hyperbolic equations Abstract: Hyperbolic equations are used extensively in applications including fluid dynamics, astrophysics, electro-magnetism, semi-conductor devices, and biological sciences. High order accurate numerical methods are efficient for solving such partial differential equations, however they are difficult to design because solutions may contain discontinuities. In this talk we will

**Refreshments will be served at 10:30 a.m. in 301 GP** The presentation will begin at 11:00 a.m. in 346 Gordon Palmer Hall Title: Smooth automorphisms of the 4‐dimensional sphere Abstract: This is a talk about smooth 4‐dimensional topology, in which the objects are smooth 4‐manifolds (spaces locally like R^4 equipped with the ability to do

Title: A Survey of the Illustrious Jacobian Conjecture Abstract: The celebrated Jacobian Conjecture asserts: Let F be a polynomial map from C^n to C^n.  If the jacobian determinant of F is everywhere non-vanishing, then F is a polynomial automorphism. This conjecture, now 82 years old and still unsolved for n>1, can be viewed as a