Our research group meetings serve many purposes. They give us a chance to learn about what everyone else is doing, bounce ideas off each other, and get inspiration from our peers. They also are an opportunity to practice mathematical communication in front of a friendly audience. Students are welcome to speak about a specific aspect of their research, something they are learning in preparation for their research, or something they think other audience members would be interested in. This is also a venue where people can practice for upcoming conference talks and get feedback. Periodically, Anna will give talks on things that she thinks everyone should know.
We will abide by the IFS rules:
Any question/additional explanation from the audience is allowed.
Ego out the window.
Examples, examples, examples.
Anna Romanov, Lecturer UNSW
Alex Sherman, Lecturer UNSW
Daniel Dunmore, PhD candidate UNSW (primary supervisor Pinhas Grossman)
Thomas Dunmore, PhD candidate UNSW (primary supervisor Pinhas Grossman)
Victor Zhang, PhD candidate UNSW (primary supervisor Anna Romanov)
Zach Leong, Honours UNSW (2024)
Jacques du Plooy, MSc candidate UNSW (primary supervisor Alex Sherman)
Pengyu Jia, Honours UNSW
Guests are welcome!
Joseph Baine, Postdoc UNSW (2024-2025)
Tasman Fell, Research Masters UNSW (2022-2025)
The group meetings take place every Thursday from TBD.
Talks will take place in either the third floor seminar room H13-3085 or the fourth floor seminar room H13-4082. See schedule for specific locations.
Notes will be posted on this website following each talk.
Contact Anna Romanov for questions.
In addition to the group meetings, we will hold a Shut Up and Write session every Thursday from TBD.
Shut Up and Write will take place in location TBD.
The purpose of Shut Up and Write is to have a dedicated 2 hour block of time each week for writing. Writing can be interpreted broadly - you are welcome to work on assignments, read a paper, write notes for yourself, etc. But if you do have actual writing to do (a thesis, a paper, a progress report), then I encourage you to use this time to work on it.
Contact Victor Zhang for details.
After group meetings, we'll all have lunch together in the tea room. You are welcome to bring your lunch, or buy a lunch and meet us there.
Term 3 2025
13 Nov, H13-4082: Anna, A type C Lusztig-Vogan category (notes)
20 Nov, H13-4082: Daniel, Introduction to his new project (notes)
27 Nov, H13-4082: Thomas, The Drinfeld Centre of a category
Term 2 2025
29 May, H13-4082: Tasman, The diagrammatic spherical category
5 June, H13-3078: Thomas, Fusion categories and their modules (notes)
12 June, H13-4082: Daniel, Introduction to W-graphs (notes)
19 June, H13-4082: Victor, Bruhat order: classical and for Lusztig-Vogan (notes)
26 June, H13-4082: Daniel, Indecomposables in the Lusztig-Vogan module categories for SU(2, 1) and SU(3, 1) (notes)
3 July, H13-4082: Victor, Standard filtrations of Soergel bimodules and localisation (notes)
24 July, H13-4082: Daniel, The exceptional Lie groups of type G2 (notes)
31 July, H13-4082: Victor, Grassmannians and Schubert cells (notes)
Term 1 2025
3 April: Ellie Little, Guest lecture: Kazhdan-Lusztig Cells for Hecke Algebras with unequal parameters (notes)
8 May, H13-3085: Daniel, Indecomposable Soergel bimodules of type A2 (notes)
15 May, H13-3085: Victor, The LV-category (and LV-module) for SU(n, 1), n ≥ 1 (notes)
22 May - no meeting
Term 3 2024
16 August: Anna, The Harish-Chandra homomorphism and infinitesimal characters (notes)
22 August: Elijah Bodish, Guest lecture: Some incarnations of Hecke algebras
30 August: Zach, Admissibility of principal series representations (notes)
13 September: Joe, The homotopy category of Soergel bimodules (notes)
19 September (Special day: Thursday, Special time: 10am-12pm, special location: H13-3085) Joe, The homotopy category of Soergel bimodules, continued. (notes)
27 September (Anna's last meeting before mat leave): Anna, Soegel bimodules as sheaves on the block variety (notes)
11 October: Victor, diagrammatics for SL(2,R) Lusztig-Vogan category (notes)
25 October: Daniel, Jordan-Holder filtrations of some small Lusztig-Vogan categories (notes)
8 November: Zach, practice honours talk (Unitary dual of SL(2,R)) (notes)
15 November (Notice: out of synch with normal two-week schedule): Thomas, Introduction to fusion categories
22, 29 November - no meeting (Daniel and Thomas at MATRIX)
10 December: Tasman, Affine Schemes (notes)
Term 2 2024
6 May: Anna, The unitary problem, why reductive, Harish-Chandra modules (notes)
20 May: Anna, The unitary dual: abelian cases (notes)
3 June: Tasman, The spherical category (notes)
12 June: Mini-conference with Arnaud and Pinhas
17 June: Daniel, Birepresentations and bicategories (notes)
1 July: (Special time: 10am-12pm, special location: H13-3085) Tasman, Diagrammatics of the spherical category (notes)
15 July: Daniel, Birepresentations and the weak Jordan-Holder theorem (notes)
Term 1 2024
12 February: Introductions - Zach, Tasman, Victor, Daniel
26 February: Victor, Examples of Lie groups (notes + more notes)
11 March: Anna, The Lusztig-Vogan category (notes)
25 March: Zach, Constructing the Lie algebra of a Lie group
8 April: Zach, Constructing the Lie algebra of a Lie group
22 April: Victor, Real forms of Lie groups (notes)
There are several ongoing seminars in Sydney/Australia appropriate for PhD students in algebra. Here are links to their pages.
Seminars Anna's students should attend:
UNSW Pure Maths Seminar (Tuesdays 12pm during term weeks)
UNSW algebra seminar - contact Alex Sherman to be added to mailing list
Additional relevant seminars:
Informal Friday Seminar (USyd)
USyd algebra seminar (USyd)
SMRI seminar (USyd)
Australian Category Seminar (Macquarie)
Past seminars (webpages include talk notes and videos of lectures)
USyd learning seminar on Deligne-Lusztig theory (Feb - May 2025)
USyd reading course on Kazhdan--Lusztig equivalences (Aug - Oct 2024)
University of Melbourne graduate course on Hodge theory and applications in algebraic geometry (via Zoom), Lecturer: Dougal Davis (Aug 2024)
UNSW/USyd learning seminar on tensor categories and their modules (Feb - June 2024)
SMRI seminar on D-modules, Lecturers: Dragan Milicic and Geodie Williamson (Aug - Nov 2023)
SMRI course on Modular Representation Theory, Lecturers: Chris Hone and Geordie Williamson (Feb - May 2023)
SMRI course on Langlands Correspondence and Bezrukavnikov's equivalence, Lecturer: Geordie Williamson (2019-2020)
[Bour] Bourbaki, Nicolas: Lie Groups and Lie algebras, Ch 1-3, Ch 4-6, Ch 7-9
[EGNO15] Etingof, Gelaki, Nikshych, Ostrik: Tensor Categories
[EMTW20] Elias, Makisumi, Theil, Williamson: Introduction to Soergel bimodules
[GKM] Goersky, Kottwitz, MacPherson: Equivariant cohomology, Koszul duality, and the localization theorem
[Hat] Hatcher: Algebraic Topology
[KT13] Knapp, Trapa: Representations of semisimple Lie groups
[Lei98] Leinster: Basic Bicategories
[MMMTZ20] Mackaay, Mazorchuk, Miemietz, Tubbenhauer, Zhang: Finitary birepresentations of finitary bicategories
[MM14] Mazorchuk, Miemietz: Transitive 2-representations of finitary 2-categories
[Mil] Milicic: Representation theory of SL(2,R)
[SEP07] Sepanski: Compact Lie groups
[Yok25] Yokota: Exceptional Lie groups
How to do great work, Paul Graham
On proof and progress in mathematics, William Thurston
What do mathematicians do? George Mackey
Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview, K. Anders Ericsson
Birds and Frogs, Freeman Dyson