Joint AWM-MOCA Speaker Series 2020-21
Iowa State’s MOCA group and AWM student chapter are collaborating to host the Joint AWM-MOCA Speaker Series (JAMSS). With support from the Department of Mathematics and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, JAMSS will host the following speakers from underrepresented groups in mathematics in order to connect women and minority students in the graduate program with a variety of successful underrepresented mathematicians in the field.
Each speaker will give a virtual talk at the department of mathematics colloquium. Additionally, our groups will host a virtual lunch with interested students and faculty during which the speaker will lead an informal discussion about their career path and how their status as an underrepresented mathematician has impacted them. Students and faculty interested in meeting one-on-one with a speaker should contact us at jamss@iastate.edu.
Kristin Lauter
Microsoft Research
Date: November 3, 2020
Website: microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/klauter/
Private AI—Machine Learning on Encrypted DataAbstract: As the world adopts Artificial Intelligence, the privacy risks are many. AI can improve our lives, but may leak or misuse our private data. Private AI is based on Homomorphic Encryption (HE), a new encryption paradigm which allows the cloud to operate on private data in encrypted form, without ever decrypting it, enabling private training and private prediction. Our 2016 ICML CryptoNets paper showed for the first time that it was possible to evaluate neural nets on homomorphically encrypted data, and opened new research directions combining machine learning and cryptography. The security of Homomorphic Encryption is based on hard problems in mathematics involving lattices, a candidate for post-quantum cryptography. Cyclotomic number rings are a good source of the lattices used in practice, which leads to new interesting problems in number theory. This talk will explain Homomorphic Encryption, Private AI, and show demos of HE in action.
Pamela Harris
Williams College
Date: February 23, 2021
Website: pamelaeharris.com
Kostant’s partition function and magic multiplex juggling sequences
Abstract: Kostant’s partition function is a vector partition function that counts the number of ways one can express a weight of a Lie algebra g as a nonnegative integral linear combination of the positive roots of g. Multiplex juggling sequences are generalizations of juggling sequences that specify an initial and terminal configuration of balls and allow for multiple balls at any particular discrete height. Magic multiplex juggling sequences generalize further to include magic balls, which cancel with standard balls when they meet at the same height. In this talk, we present a combinatorial equivalence between positive roots of a Lie algebra and throws during a juggling sequence. This provides a juggling framework to calculate Kostant’s partition functions, and a partition function framework to compute the number of juggling sequences. This is joint work with Carolina Benedetti, Christopher R. H. Hanusa, Alejandro Morales, and Anthony Simpson.
Selenne Banuelos
California State University Channel Islands
Date: March 16, 2020
Website: https://ciapps.csuci.edu/
Modeling the Long Term Effects of Thermoregulation on Human Sleep
Abstract: The connection between human sleep and energy exertion has long been regarded as part of the reasoning for the need to sleep. A recent theory pro- poses that during REM sleep, energy utilized for thermoregulation is diverted to other relevant biological processes. We present a mathematical model of human sleep/wake regulation with thermoregulatory functions to gain quantitative insight into the effects of ambient temperature on sleep quality. Our model ex- tends previous models by incorporating equations for the metabolic processes that control thermoregulation during sleep. We present numerical simulations that provide a quantitative answer for how humans adjust by changing the normal sleep stage progression when it is challenged with ambient temperatures away from thermoneutral. We explore the dynamics for a single night and several nights. Our results indicate that including the effects of temperature is a vital component of modeling sleep.
Karen Saxe
AMS Office of Government Relations
About AWM
The Association of Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a non-profit organization formed to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity and the equal treatment of women and girls in the mathematical sciences. The Iowa State AWM Student Chapter organizes social events to promote a sense of community, formal events to discuss the AWM mission, and outreach events to help the local community.
About Moca
The Mathematicians of Color Alliance (MOCA) is a group of minority graduate and undergraduate mathematics students whose goal is recruitment, retention, and the mentoring of underrepresented students by creating a presence in the department, on campus, and around the nation. MOCA organizes various activities to promote diversity as well as hosting social events to foster a sense of community among ourselves and the wider undergraduate and graduate math communities.
Iowa State University Department of Mathematics
396 Carver Hall
Ames, IA 50010
Organizers
Gabby Angeloro, Kate Lorenzen, Christian McRoberts, Carolyn Reinhart, Liz Sprangel, Christine Wiersma
Leslie Hogben, Michael Young
Contact Us
515-294-1752
jamss@iastate.edu