Research Seminar in Mathematics (Math 8450), Fall, 2022

Tuesdays as announced, 12-5:50

509 Lake Hall

Instructor: Jonathan Weitsman, 521 Lake Hall; j.weitsman@northeastern.edu

Prerequisites: Status as graduate student in Mathematics or permission of instructor.

Course description: This seminar is an opportunity for mathematics graduate students to learn about cutting edge research in geometry, topology, mathematical physics, combinatorics, representation theory, and other areas of mathematics from some of the top researchers in these areas. Once every two weeks, an invited speaker has joined us for lunch, and an informal discussion, followed by an elementary talk giving an introduction to the basic examples and main motivation for the research discussed, and aimed at graduate students. The speaker will then present a formal research talk open to all faculty and students, followed by questions and a further talk, and then by dinner. This seminar is modelled after the very successful graduate research seminar held by Dennis Sullivan at the CUNY Graduate Center for many years. Some of the speakers who joined us in the past were Shlomo Sternberg, Eckhard Meinrenken, Richard Schwarz, William Goldman, Andy Neitzke, Victor Guillemin, Lisa Jeffrey, Sarah Koch, Anton Alekseev, Benson Farb, Bertrand Eynard, Reyer Sjamaar, and Elisenda Grigsby.

Class schedule: Alternate Tuesdays: Introductory talk 1-2, Tea Break 2-2:30, Formal talk 2:30-3:30, Tea Break 3:30 - 4:30, further informal discussion period available.

Schedule may vary and will be announced in advance for each talk.

Course requirements: Students registering for the course participate in the discussions and attend the talks. Guided by the Instructor, they prepare a written and oral report on one of the topics covered during the seminar, which they present to the other students and to the Instructor. The goal is to reinforce and recapitulate the topics studied and to develop practice in presenting research seminars, modelled after prominent research mathematicians.

This course satisfies the Research Seminar requirement for the Ph.D. degree.