Seda Albayrak

About me: Canadian-Turkish mathematician who is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the Simon Fraser University working with Marni Mishna. I completed my PhD at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Jason Bell. 

Postdoctoral scholar in KRATER, an Associated Team at Inria Saclay.

Currently at the Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Versailles (LMV), UVSQ, working with Lucia Di Vizio as part of a Séjour Scientifique de Haut Niveau (High Level Scientific Fellowship) awarded by the French Embassy in Canada.

A copy of my CV: here. 

Research Interests: Number theory, algebra and their interactions with automata theory. In particular, including but not limited to: Combinatorics on words, Algebraic combinatorics and algebraic dynamics, functional equations, difference/differential Galois theory.

Publications and Projects:

1. Albayrak, Seda; Bell, Jason. A Refinement of Christol’s Theorem for algebraic power series, Math. Z. 300 (2022), 2265-2288. DOI:10.1007/s00209-021-02868-7

2. Albayrak, Seda; Bell, Jason. Quantitative Estimates for the size of an intersection of sparse automatic sets. Theoret. Comput. Sci. 977 (2023), 114144. DOI:10.1016/j.tcs.2023.114144

3. Albayrak, Seda; Ghosh, Samprit; Knapp, Greg; Nguyen, Khoa. On Certain Polytopes Associated to Products of Algebraic Integer Conjugates. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 153(5) (2025), 1917-1932. DOI:10.1090/proc/17146

4. Albayrak, Seda. (2025) A Characterization of Algebraic Multivariate Power Series with Sparse Support. In: Gamard, G., Leroy, J. (eds) Combinatorics on Words. WORDS 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15729. Springer, Cham. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-97548-6_2

5. Albayrak, Seda. Algebraicity of multivariate generalized Laurent Series. In Preparation.

6. Albayrak, Seda. Two Characterizations of Algebraic Multivariate Generalized Laurent Series with Sparse Support. In Preparation.

7. Albayrak, Seda; Di Vizio, Lucia; Mishna, Marni. Classification of solutions to higher order iterative functional equations. In Progress.

PhD Thesis: Sparse Automatic Sets (External Examiner: Michel Rigo)

Invited* and Contributed talks:

1. *Séminaires SymPa, LAMFA, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France, October 15, 2026.

2. *Séminaire différentiel, Institut Henri Poincare, Paris, France, October 13, 2026.

3. *Journées EFI, Grenoble, France, October 6-8 2026.

4. *Symbolic Dynamics and Arithmetic Expansions, Roscoff, France, Sep 28-Oct 2, 2026.

5. Numeration 2026, Nancy, France, June 1-5 2026.

6. *DART XIV, Île d'Oléron, France, May 25-29 2026.

7. *Séminaire AG, Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Versailles, UVSQ, CNRS, Versailles, France, October 2025.

8. Combinatorics, Automata and Number Theory (CANT) 2025, Marseille, France, Sept-Oct 2025.

9. WORDS2025 (Combinatorics on words), Nancy, France, July 2025.

10. *DART XIII, Beijing, China, May 2025.

11. *Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry Seminar (SFU NT-AG), SFU, Burnaby, BC, Canada, February 2025.

12. *UBC Number Theory Seminar, UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada, December 2024.

13. Canadian Number Theory Association XVI (CNTA XVI), Fields Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada, June 2024.

14. *2023 CMS Winter Meeting, Montreal, QC, Canada, December 2023.

15. *One World Combinatorics on Words (Online), November 2023. 

16. *Lethbridge Number theory and Combinatorics Seminar, University of Lethbridge, Canada, September 2023.

17. *Alberta Number Theory Days XIV, Banff, AB, Canada, April 2023. 

18. *AMS-EMS-SMF Joint International Meeting, Grenoble, France, July 2022. 

19. Journées Arithmétiques, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2019. 

20. *AdIMOM Conference, Toronto, ON, Canada, April 2019. 

Teaching (current): -

Teaching (past): At Simon Fraser University: 

Summer 2026 - MATH 260 - Ordinary Differential Equations

Spring 2026 - MATH 152 - Calculus II

Fall 2025 - MATH 232 - Applied Linear Algebra

Spring 2025 - MATH 152 - Calculus II

At the University of Calgary:

Fall 2024 - MATH 265 - University Calculus I      

Spring 2024 - MATH 311 - Linear Methods II

Fall 2023 - MATH 265 - University Calculus I

Spring 2023 - MATH 311 - Linear Methods II

I taught each of the following courses multiple times at the University of Waterloo between 2020-2023.

1. MATH 137 - Calculus 1 for Honours Math (online and in-person)

2. MATH 118 - Calculus 1 for Engineering (online)

3. MATH 138 - Calculus 2 for Honours Math (online)

4. MATH 235 - Linear Algebra 2 (online and in-person)

Organizing: 

Calgary Algebra and Number Theory Seminars (ANTS), October 2024 -- December 2024.

Emerging Frontiers in Number Theory: Insights from Early-Career Researchers Session, CMS Winter Meeting (2024)

Math writing café (2023 -- 2024)

Alberta Number Theory Days XV (March 22-24, 2024)

Slides for some talks: 

1. AMS-EMS-SMF Conference, Grenoble, France (07/2022)

2. Alberta Number Theory Days XIV, Banff (04/2023)

Extracurricular: Not as passionate as I am about math, but I really like watching movies and talking about them afterwards. See my movie blog here: What I think of a movie, where I write about what I think of a movie I saw. I am also a member of three separate book clubs which I actively participate in on a regular basis (see here for my booklists).

Languages: Turkish (native), English (fluent), French (B1), Spanish (A2).