2024

The 2024 edition of Count Me In will rune from 17 June until 26 July. Here is a schedule:

Monday 17/6: Check in with Nick Sheridan in James Clerk Maxwell Building, Office 5615. Introductory meeting at 11am. 

Wednesday 19/6: Maths talk and information session. This event will be open to online participants; physical location, time, and zoom link TBA.

• 3-4pm: Maths talk by Navid Nabijou:

  • Title: Enumerative geometry from Apollonius to Zeuthen 

  • Abstract: In 218 BC the Carthaginian general Hannibal marched his war elephants across the Alps, on a mission to decapitate the ascendant Roman Republic. At the other end of the Mediterranean, in what is now Turkey, a mathematician called Apollonius was drawing circles in the sand. He noticed that when he fixed three circles, there were precisely eight circles tangent to all three. The field of enumerative geometry was born.

Twenty-two centuries later, enumerative geometry remains stronger than ever (alas, the same cannot be said of those hubristic conquerors). Modern enumerative geometry is a synthesis of two fundamental geometric ideas: moduli spaces and intersection theory. I will take you on a guided tour of these ideas, surveying the landscape and pausing to examine some particularly interesting trinkets. My goal is to impart some of the beauty and wonder of the subject. Our tour will take us through Bezout’s theorem and projective duality, on to Chow groups and the moduli space of plane conics.

• 4.30-5.30pm: "What it's like to do a maths PhD", conducted by members of the Piscopia Initiative.

Wednesday 26/7, afternoon: Group presentations: "What is the problem?"

Wednesday 3/7: Maths talk and information session. This event will be open to online participants; physical location, time, and zoom link TBA.

• 3-4pm: Maths talk (title TBA) by Sue Sierra

• 4.30-5.30pm: information session "How to apply to do a maths PhD", conducted by members of the Piscopia Initiative. 

Wednesday 10/7, afternoon: Group presentations: "What is our approach?"

Wednesday 17/7: Maths talk and information session. This event will be open to online participants; physical location, time, and zoom link TBA.

• 3-4pm: Maths talk (title TBA) by Emily Roff

• 4.30-5.30pm: information session "Careers after a maths PhD", conducted by Richard Szabo and Cathal Cummins.

Wednesday 26/7, afternoon: Final group presentations: "What we did"