Date & Time

Location
Math Sciences Building, 6620

Parking
Lot 2

Description
Professor Dimitri Shlyakhtenko, Chair of the UCLA Department of Mathematics and Professor Loong Kong, Director of the Actuarial Sciences Program invite you to a special reception in honor of:

Meet Brad Smith, program faculty and connect with current students and fellow alumni.

RSVP

Please contact Anna Ramos with any questions at anna@math.ucla.edu

Date
Saturday, May 5, 2012

Time
9:00am - 7:30pm (UCLA Alumni Day)
9:00am - 12:00pm (Mathematics Info Fair)

Location
Mathematics Info Fair
Wilson Plaza

Description
Join us for UCLA Alumni Day 2012 where thousands of UCLA alumni and their families and friends come back to campus for a day of fun, good food, lectures, campus tours and more. Reconnect with old friends and network with new ones.

The Mathematics Info fair is for UCLA alumni and their families interested in the power and beauty of math and its real world applications.

Say hello and catch up with the latest news about the department. Interact with applied math researchers, who will present exhibits on their most cutting-edge work, including imaging science and physics-based simulation and computer graphics for movie special effects. Representatives from UCLA Math's Curtis Center will also be on hand to showcase math education programs in the K-12 community and beyond.

RSVP
To see the Day's schedule of activities and to sign up, visit http://alumniday.ucla.edu/2012/schedule/overview.aspx.

Speakers
Michael P. Brenner
Glover Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics
Harvard University

&

Amy Rowat
Professor, UCLA Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Date
Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Time
4:00pm
Reception to follow lecture in the CNSI Lobby.

Location
California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) Auditorium

Parking is available for $11 in Lot 2.
For CNSI location and parking location, visit http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/.

Organizers
UCLA Department of Mathematics, Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)

Abstract
Much of cooking, both that which you practice every day, and that which is practiced by the world's finest chefs, is strongly rooted in science and scientific principles. With a little bit of knowledge about some basic principles in science, as well as methods for making measurements, experiments in the kitchen can be reinterpreted in scientific terms, leading to new culinary creations. We will describe the development of a science course at Harvard (debuted in the fall of 2010) on this topic, in which we used cooking as the basis to teach science to 300 non-science undergraduates. Each week we were visited by a world famous chef (e.g. Ferran Adria, Jose Andres, Grant Achatz, Bill Yosses, Dan Barber, Wylie Dufresne...), who illustrated the scientific principles of the week. Each lesson was illustrated by a laboratory, in which the students carried out and made scientific measurements on a recipe--understood in quantitative terms by an equation. This lecture will summarize the intersection of science and cooking, focusing on its use as a pedagogical device for teaching science.

Video
The lecture is now available online.

View here.

Date
Saturday, May 21, 2011

Time
9:30am-1:00pm

Location
Wilson Plaza

http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/.

Organizer
UCLA Department of Mathematics

Description
The Info fair is for math alumni and their families, as well as alumni interested in the power of math to solve real world problems. Come and network with your fellow alumni and interact with researchers from the department, who will present posters on some of their most cutting-edge work, including crime modeling and image processing. Representatives from UCLA Math’s Curtis Center will also be on hand to showcase math enrichment activities in the K-12 community and other math education programs.

RSVP
Each ticket includes parking, access to three power panels, all activities, lunch, dinner and concert. RSVP for UCLA Alumni Day here.

Speaker
Shing-Tung Yau, Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University;
Director of The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Date
Friday, January 14, 2011

Time
3:00pm

Location
Haines Hall, Room 39

This event is free and open to the public.
A reception with light refreshments follows the lecture at IPAM. Copies of Yau's new book with co-author Steve Nadis The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions will be available for purchase.

Parking is available for $10 in Lot 2.
For parking and lecture location, visit http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/.

Organizers
The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), UCLA's Department of Mathematics, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy

Abstract
One of the smallest things you can possibly imagine—six-dimensional geometric spaces that may be more than a trillion times smaller than an electron—could, nevertheless, be one of the defining features of our universe, exerting a profound influence that extends to every single point in the cosmos. In his book, Yau tells the story of those spaces, which physicists have dubbed "Calabi-Yau manifolds."  Yau managed to prove the existence, mathematically, of those spaces, despite the fact that he had originally set out to prove that such spaces could not possibly exist. This mathematical proof, which had initially been ignored by physicists (partly because it was steeped in difficult, nonlinear arguments), nevertheless made its way into the center of string theory, which now stands as the leading theory of the universe and our best hope yet of unifying all the particles and forces observed—and yet to be observed—in nature.

Speaker Bio
Shing-Tung Yau's work has impact in both physics and mathematics. Calabi-Yau manifolds are among the 'standard toolkit' for string theorists today. His proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity demonstrated—sixty years after its discovery—that Einstein's theory is consistent and stable. His proof of the Calabi conjecture allowed physicists—using Calabi-Yau compactification—to show that string theory is a viable candidate for a unified theory of nature. In recognition of his many accomplishments, Yau has also received a number of awards and prizes, including the Fields Medal (1982), a MacArthur Fellowship (1984)  the Crafoord Prize (1994), the U.S. National Medal of Science (1997), and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (2010). Yau's book, The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, was published earlier this year with co-author Steve Nadis.

Poster
Link to PDF

Video
The lecture is now available online.

UCLA on iTunes U

Speaker
UCLA Mathematics Professor Terence Tao, 2006 Fields Medalist

Date
Saturday, October 9, 2010

Time
6:15pm

A reception with light refreshments follows the lecture on the Schoenberg patio.
This event is free and open to the public.
K–12 mathematics students are welcome to attend.

RSVP is encouraged.

Location
Schoenberg Hall

Parking is available for $10 in Lot 2.
For Schoenberg Hall and parking location, visit http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/.

Organizers
The American Mathematical Society, The UCLA Department of Mathematics, and The Philip C. Curtis Jr. Center for Mathematics and Teaching

Abstract
How do we know the distances from the earth to the sun and moon, from the sun to the other planets, and from the sun to other stars and distant galaxies? Clearly we cannot measure these directly. Nevertheless there are many indirect methods of measurement, combined with basic high-school mathematics, which can allow one to get quite convincing and accurate results without the need for advanced technology (for instance, even the ancient Greeks could compute the distances from the earth to the sun and moon to moderate accuracy). These methods rely on climbing a “cosmic distance ladder,” using measurements of nearby distances to then deduce estimates on distances slightly further away. In this lecture, Tao shall discuss several of the rungs in this ladder.

RSVP
The time frame to RSVP has ended.

Poster
Link to PDF

Video
The lecture is now available online.

UCLA on YouTube
UCLA on iTunes U

Featuring
Professor Emeritus Thomas “The Father” Ferguson
Distinguished Professor Leonard “The Mentor” Kleinrock
Professor Emeritus Don “The Statistician” Ylvisaker
Professor Richard “The Moderator” Korf
Professional Poker Player, William “Bill” Chen

Date
Monday, May 24, 2010

Time
6:00pm

A reception with light refreshments follows the lecture.
This event is free and open to the public.
Seating is limited

Location
UCLA Fowler Museum, Lenart Auditorium
Parking is available for $10 near the Fowler Museum in Lots 4 & 5.
http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/incEngine/?content=cm&cm=maps

Organizers
The Department of Mathematics and UCLA Engineering

RSVP
hsseasevents@support.ucla.edu

Poster
Link to PDF

Live Stream
A live stream of the event is available for those who cannot attend beginning at 6:00pm online at http://tinyurl.com/uclagametheory. Questions and comments can be sent throughout the event via www.twitter.com. Hashtag: #uclagametheory

Date
Monday, January 11, 2010

Time
4:00-5:00pm

Location
Physics & Astronomy Building (PAB), Room 1425
Reception to follow in PAB lobby

Organizer
Divisions of Life and Physical Sciences, UCLA College of Letters and Science

Abstract
A forty year old branch of probability theory is devoted to the analysis of large systems in which individuals evolve in time according to rules that include both randomness and interactions. Here is a sampling of these systems, together with some areas that partially motivated them: Voter models (population genetics; tumor growth), Glauber dynamics (Ising model for magnetism; Gibbs samplers), contact processes (spread of infection; Reggeon field theory), and exclusion processes (messenger RNA; traffic flow). The main issues that are dealt with involve the long time behavior of the system, and how it is affected by the details of the evolution rules. In my lecture, I will describe some of these models, and discuss some of the results that have been proved about them.

About
The UCLA Science Faculty Research Colloquium Series is designed to promote interdisciplinary collaborative research, highlight the research of exceptionally distinguished faculty, and enhance education about significant new research in the sciences. The lectures are designed to be of interest to a general audience.

Poster: View

Video lecture available as a podcast on UCLA on iTunes U.

Date
Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Time
4:30-5:30pm

Location
Moore Hall, Room 100
Reception to follow at IPAM (Portola Plaza Bldg)

Organizer
Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) and Department of Mathematics

Abstract
This talk will be a general presentation of Mean Field Games (MFG in short), a new class of mathematical models and problems introduced and studied in collaboration with Jean-Michel Lasry. Roughly speaking, MFG are mathematical models that aim to describe the behavior of a very large number of “agents” who optimize their decisions while taking into account and interacting with the other agents. The derivation of MFG, which can be justified rigorously from Nash equilibria for N players games, letting N go to infinity, leads to new nonlinear systems involving ordinary differential equations or partial differential equations. Many classical systems are particular cases of MFG like, for example, compressible Euler equations, Hartree equations, porous media equations, semilinear elliptic equations, Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations, Vlasov-Boltzmann models ... In this talk we shall explain in a very simple example how MFG models are derived and present some overview of the theory, its connections with many other fields and its applications.

About
This lecture is part of the Department of Mathematics’ Distinguished Lecture Series and the IPAM workshop “New Directions in Financial Mathematics.” Pierre-Louis Lions is a French mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1994 for his work on partial differential equations. Lions earned a doctorate from the University of Paris VI in 1979. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and Professor at the College de France. For his outstanding contributions to mathematics and its applications, he has received many prestigious awards, including the Doistau-Blutet Foundation Prize, the Ampère Prize, the IBM Prize and the Philip Morris Prize.

Poster: View

Date
Monday, October 5, 2009

Time
4:30-5:30pm

Location
Franz Hall, Room 1178
Reception to follow at IPAM

Organizers
IPAM, Department of Mathematics and the Computer Science Department

For more information about the lecture, click here.

Date
Saturday, May 9, 2009

Time
5:30-6:30pm

Location
IPAM, Portola Plaza Building

Organizers
The Department of Mathematics and IPAM

Martin Davis, New York University
Hilbert’s Tenth Problem

I will discuss various aspects of the work that led to a proof that Hilbert\'s Tenth Problem (Diophantine Equations) is unsolvable. The unsolvability result is a consequence of the equivalence between two notions, one from logic/computability theory, the other, from number theory. Interesting and curious applications of this equivalence will be discussed including a universal polynomial equation, a prime representing function, and Diophantine form of famous problems.

Michael O. Rabin, Harvard University and Google Research
Novel Concepts of Proof and Their Applications

Over the past 30 years computer scientists have created new revolutionary notions of mathematical proofs. The introduction of randomness created proofs that allow for a probability of error. Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) enable a demonstration of a mathematical truth without revealing any information beyond the claimed truth. I will discuss these concepts, present a new practically efficient method for ZKPs, and describe applications to business transactions such as the secure and secrecy preserving conduct of auctions. The talk will be self contained and readily accessible.

Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University
From Aristotle to the Pentium

Logic started as a branch of philosophy, going back to Greeks in the classical period. Computers are relatively young, dating back to the middle of the 20th century. This talk tells the story of logic begat computers, tracing the path from Aristotle to the Pentium. This is a story full of both intellectual drama, as well as real-life drama, with most of the characters dying young, miserably, or both.

Date
Thursday, April 30, 2009

Time
2:00-7:00pm
Reception to follow at 6:00pm

Location
Kerckhoff Hall, Charles E. Young Grand Salon

Organizers
The UCLA Logic Center and the Department of Mathematics

Podcasting
Video lectures available through UCLA on iTunes U