Calendar
Posted May 15, 2025
Last modified July 2, 2025
Informal Geometry and Topology Seminar Questions or comments?
1:00 pm Lockett Hall 233
Sayani Mukherjee, Louisiana State University
Continuing our Discussion on K-Theory
We are following Inna Zakharevich's book on K-theory and Characteristic Classes. Link to book: https://pi.math.cornell.edu/~zakh/book.pdf
Posted May 15, 2025
Last modified August 1, 2025
Informal Geometry and Topology Seminar Questions or comments?
1:00 pm Lockett Hall 233
Krishnendu Kar, Louisiana State University
Continuing our Discussion on K-Theory
We are following Inna Zakharevich's book on K-theory and Characteristic Classes. Link to book: https://pi.math.cornell.edu/~zakh/book.pdf
Posted May 15, 2025
Last modified August 1, 2025
Informal Geometry and Topology Seminar Questions or comments?
1:00 pm Lockett Hall 233
Krishnendu Kar, Louisiana State University
Continuing our Discussion on K-Theory
We are wrapping up our discussion of Inna Zakharevich's book on K-theory and Characteristic Classes. Link to book: https://pi.math.cornell.edu/~zakh/book.pdf
Posted January 19, 2025
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm Lockett 232Qualifier Exam in Topology
Posted January 19, 2025
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm Lockett 232Qualifier Exam in Analysis
Posted January 19, 2025
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm Lockett 232Qualifier Exam in Algebra
Posted January 19, 2025
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm Lockett 232Qualifier Exam in Applied Math
Posted August 2, 2025
Last modified August 20, 2025
Algebra and Number Theory Seminar Questions or comments?
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Lockett 233 or click here to attend on Zoom
Joseph DiCapua, Louisiana State University
Lubin–Tate Formal Group Laws
In this expository talk, we introduce Lubin–Tate formal group laws. The torsion points of a Lubin–Tate formal group law are defined, and we discuss the endomorphism ring of such a formal group law. Certain torsion points are used to define Coleman's trace operator, an important tool in Iwasawa theory. We briefly mention how Lubin–Tate formal group laws are used in one construction of the maximal abelian extension of a finite extension of the $p$-adics.
Posted August 18, 2025
Discussion and Training in Combinatorics
3:30 pm Lockett Hall 233
Gyaneshwar Agrahari, LSU
Emmanuel Astante, Louisiana State University
Organizational Meeting of DTC Seminar
The first meeting of the Discussion and Combinatorics Seminar will be held on this day and time. In this meeting, we will introduce everyone and give the details of how the seminar will be run.
Posted August 16, 2025
Last modified August 21, 2025
Informal Analysis Seminar Questions or comments?
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm Lockett 232
Moisés Gómez-Solís, Louisiana State University
Laura Kurtz, Louisiana State University
Organizational Meeting
Posted July 21, 2025
Last modified August 17, 2025
Informal Geometry and Topology Seminar Questions or comments?
1:30 pm Lockett Hall 233
Krishnendu Kar, Louisiana State University
Matthew Lemoine, Louisiana State University
Organizational Meeting
Please join us for the Informal Geometry and Topology Seminar. This seminar is an opportunity for grad students to get experience talking in front of an audience and practicing giving talks. In this first meeting, we will decide which topic/book/paper that we will follow for our discussion during the Fall semester. We will also have opportunities for individual talks. For more information, feel free to contact Matthew Lemoine or Krishnendu Kar.
Posted August 23, 2025
Last modified August 26, 2025
Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?
10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)
Alex Olshevsky, Boston University
AFOSR YIP and NSF CAREER Awardee
The Connection Between Reinforcement Learning and Gradient Descent
Temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation is one of the earliest methods in reinforcement learning and the basis of many modern methods. We revisit the analysis of TD learning through a new lens and show that TD may be viewed as a modification of gradient descent. This leads not only to a better explanation of what TD does but also improved convergence times guarantees. We discuss applications of this result to more involved reinforcement learning methods, such as actor-critic and neural-network based methods.
Posted August 25, 2025
Combinatorics Seminar Questions or comments?
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Lcokett 233 or click to to attend on Zoom
Yiwei Ge, Louisiana State University
Unavoidable cc-minors in large 2-connected graphs
A cycle-contraction minor (or cc-minor) of a graph is obtained by iteratively contracting cycles. These minors interact in interesting ways with other graph relations, such as induced subgraphs and minors. In this talk, we will introduce the notion of cc-minors and explain the motivation for studying them from both graphic and matroidal perspectives. A 2023 paper of Allred, Ding, and Oporowski identified a set of unavoidable induced subgraphs in sufficiently large 2-connected graphs. We present a dual version of this theorem by focusing on unavoidable cc-minors of large 2-connected graphs. This talk is based on joint work with James Oxley.