Upcoming MAMS Seminar Series
Fall 2025
9/30/2025, Tue. 2:30-3:30 pm in Clark 309
Speaker: Diliya Yalikun (Case Western Reserve University)
Title: Floating bodies for ball-convex bodies
Abstract: We introduce a notion of floating bodies for ball-convex sets, obtained by replacing half-spaces with Euclidean balls in the classical construction. A right derivative of volume of these floating bodies yields a new curvature-based measure that interpolates between ball-convex geometry and the classical affine surface area.
Based on joint work with C. Schütt and E. M. Werner.
9/16/2025, Tue. 2:30-3:30 pm in Clark 309
Speaker: Michał Wojciechowski (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Title: On the Mityagin-DeLeeuw-Mirkhil theorem with differential constraints
Abstract: The classical result of the authors mentioned in the title says that the uniform norm of Q(D)f is bounded by the uniform norms of Q_j(D)f, j=1,2,…,k for functions f of compact support if and only if Q is in the span of Q_j’s (here Q and Q_j’s are homogeneous polynomials of the same degree). In the talk I will present the analogs of this result with additional constraint that the estimate holds only for f being a solution of differential equation P(D)f=0.
This is joint work with Eduard Curca.
Fall 2025
10/1/2025, Wed. 4-5 pm in Sears 439
Speaker: Professor Jenny Brynjarsdottir (Case Western Reserve University)
Title: Teaching and Learning Statistics and Math with ChatGPT – discussion
Abstract: I will share some insights from a workshop I attended this summer named “Teaching and Learning Statistics with ChatGPT 4.0”. Following that, I will facilitate discussions about LLMs and teaching and mentoring students. Possible discussion topics include: (How) should we incorporate LLMs and chatbots into statistics and mathematics courses? and Do (and in what way) these new chatbots change what and how we teach statistics and mathematics?
Fall 2025
Fall 2025
10/11/2025, Wed. 1-2 pm in AW Smith B01
Speaker: Reeve Johnson (CWRU)
Title: Much to Chu On: A Recipe for *-Autonomous Categories
Abstract: Sometimes one ingredient in a dish makes all the difference, like a dash of Greek yogurt in your boxed mac and cheese. If one object in a symmetric closed monoidal category serves as a global dualizing object, then we have ourselves a robust, hearty, *-autonomous category. Sometimes we are missing that one special ingredient (Greek yogurt also makes for excellent smoothies), but there are still ways of making the intended dish delicious. The Chu construction takes any symmetric closed monoidal category and makes a *-autonomous category out of its components. How? Well, this abstract is just the appetizer! Come to the talk for the full course meal.
9/17/2025, Wed. 1-2 pm in AW Smith B01
Speaker: Reeve Johnson (CWRU)
Title: All the Categories Who Independent: A *-autonomous category prime
Abstract: You’re familiar with the unit interval as a poset. You’ve seen that the double dual of a finite dimensional vector space is isomorphic to the vector space. You attended my talk on polycategories last semester. (Right?) What do all of these have in common? Why, *-autonomous categories, of course! In this talk, we will explore the structure of *-autonomous categories and dive into numerous examples.
9/10/2025, Wed. 1-2 pm in AW Smith B01
Speaker: Jordan Sawdy (University of Kentucky)
Title: Generalized Character Theory via Monoidal Traces
Abstract: In linear algebra, the trace of a square matrix is defined to be the sum of its diagonal entries. Though quite simple to define, this operation enjoys several nice properties that make it useful for producing invariants of vector spaces and associated structures. One such invariant is the character of a group representation. In this talk, we will look at a generalization of the trace to symmetric monoidal categories introduced by Dold and Puppe and use it to define “generalized characters” (with the representation-theoretic character arising as a special case). We will see that these characters behave nicely with respect to certain adjunctions in a way that generalizes the formula for the character of an induced representation. Finally, I will mention my work on a bicategorical instantiation of this story and its algebro-geometric interpretation, following a 2021 paper of Hoyois, Safranov, Scherotzke, and Sibilla.
9/3/2025, Wed. 1-2 pm in AW Smith B01
Speaker: Johnny Taylor (Case Western Reserve University)
Title: Globularly modelling E_infinity Spaces
Abstract: We construct a theory for globular symmetric monoidal infinity-groupoids and begin the
process of using them to model E_infinity spaces.
8/27/2025, Wed. 1-2 pm in AW Smith B01
Speaker: Johnny Taylor (Case Western Reserve University)
Title: Controlled Theories
Abstract: Classically, a Lawvere theory may be presented with generators and relations which determine the structure of its models. This is fine to handle notions of algebras in the category of Sets but fails in higher dimensions due to conflicting structure data in a Lawvere theory. Controlled theories as introduced by the speaker are a framework for
categorical algebra which extends Lawvere theories and consists of generators, relations and an additional control component which includes into the presentation. The control component ensures that the issue of conflicting structure data is non-existent. We begin to show that this extension serves as a natural framework to do higher categorical algebra.