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Mathematical Sciences Seminar

The School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences holds regular seminars in pure and applicable mathematics, with presentations from staff or invited speakers. 

The seminars take place on the second Wednesday of the month, from 3.30-4.30pm in Room 745, Malet Street, unless stated otherwise. 

All are welcome to attend. 

Event summaries

2022

  • Michael Livesey, University of Manchester: Arbitrarily large Morita Froebenius numbers, 26 January.
  • Michele Zordan, Imperial College London: Rationality of representation zeta functions of compact p-adic analytic groups, 23 February.
  • Nadia Mazza, Lancaster University: On endotrivial modules, 9 March.
  • Stephen Connor, University of York: Cutoff for a one-sided transposition shuffle, 5 October.

2021

  • Veronica Vinciotti, University of Trento: Copula graphical models for count data, 14 December.
  • Jochen Einbeck, Durham University: A graphical tool for assessing the suitability of count regression models, with applications in biological dosimetry, 8 December.
  • Richard Pymar, Birkbeck, University of London: On the stationary distribution of the noisy voter model, 30 November.
  • Elena Boguslavskaya, Brunel, University of London: Trading multiple mean reversion, 17 November.
  • Diana Roman, Brunel, University of London: Stochastic dominance, multi-CVaR and enhanced indexation: a unified framework for portfolio models, 10 November.
  • Davide Pigoli, King's College London: A functional data analysis approach for the reconstruction of growth curves in forensic entomology, 3 November.
  • Linus Wunderlich, Queen Mary University of London: The parametric PDE method: Applications in finance and theoretical results, 27 October.
  • Martin Benning, Queen Mary University of London: From perceptrons to lifted Bregman networks, 20 October.

2020

  • Sounak Chakraborty, University of Missouri: 28 October, 3.30pm-4.30pm.
  • Joanna A. Ellis-Monaghan, University of Amsterdam: 4 November, 3.30pm-4.30pm.
  • Vivekananda Roy, Iowa State University: 11 November, 3.30pm-4.30pm.
  • Aixin Tan, University of Iowa: 25 November, 3.30pm-4.30pm.
  • Michail Papathomas, University of St Andrews: 9 December, 3.30pm-4.30pm.

2019

  • Katherine Staden, University of Oxford: 'Erdös-Rademacher: problems in discrete structures'
  • Melissa Lee, Imperial College London
  • Johannes Carmesin, University of Birmingham
  • Swati Chandna, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Jonathan Noel, University of Warwick

2018

  • Joe Bailey, University of Essex: 'Mathematics of movement ecology' 
  • Annika Hecke, University of Oxford: 'Colouring dense random graphs' 
  • Liz Quaglia, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'Secrecy for elections: getting it right and making use of it' 
  • Ben Fairbairn, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Hamiltonicity . . . Eulerianess . . . from finite groups - who knew??!?' 

2017

  • Jonathan Elmer, Middlesex University: 'Modular coinvariants' 
  • Christina Pagel, University College London: 'A mathematician dips her toes into politics . . .' 
  • Richard Pymar, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Two phase transitions in the PAM with correlated potential' 
  • Bill Jackson, Queen Mary, University of London: 'Unique low-rank completability of partially filled matrices' 
  • Joanna Fawcett, Imperial College London: 'Bruck nets and partial Sherk planes'
  • Elisa Covato, University of Bristol: 'Simple groups, fixed point sets and involutions' 
  • Darío Garcia, University of Leeds: 'Applications of ultraproducts of finite structures to combinatorics' 
  • Amanda Cameron, Queen Mary, University of London: 'An Ehrhart theory generalisation of the Tutte polynomial' 
  • Bill O'Donovan, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'Nakayama's Conjecture via Young Modules' 
  • Amarpreet Rattan, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Parking functions and tree depth' 

2016

  • Sune Jakobsen, University College London: 'Cryptogenography: anonymity without trust' 
  • Isabella Gollini, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Latent variable models for complex networks: flexible modelling and scalable inference' 
  • Adam Thomas, University of Bristol: 'The Jacobson-Morozov Theorem and complete reducibility of Lie subalgebras' 
  • Joseph Cook, Loughborough University: 'Symmetry and low lying Eigenvalues' 
  • Katie Clinch, Queen Mary, University of London: 'Symmetry and computer-aided design' 
  • Andrew McDowell, University of Birmingham: 'DNA origami and the complexity of Eulerian circuits with turning costs' 
  • Christina Pagel, University College London: 'Applying operational research for the NHS' 
  • Sarah Hart, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Product-free sets in groups' 
  • Justin McInroy, University of Bristol: 'Presentations for orthogonal groups?' 
  • Michelle Kendall, Imperial College London: 'Mapping phylogenetic trees to reveal distinct patterns of evolution' 

2015

  • Alberto Caimo, Università della Svizzera italiana: 'Bayesian social network analysis and applications' 
  • Ben Fairbairn, Birkbeck, University of London: 'New moonshines, mock modular forms and string theory' 
  • Cheryl Praeger, Western Australia/University of Oxford: 'Local transitivity properties of graphs and pairwise transitive designs' 
  • Tom Lidbetter, London School of Economics: 'Search games with submodular payoff functions' 
  • Neil Barton, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Why be interested in incompleteness anyway?' 
  • David Bradley-Williams, University of Central Lancashire: 'A family of maximal closed subgroups of Sym(ℕ) acting on trees' 
  • Julian Brough, University of Cambridge: 'Recognising abelian Sylow subgroups in finite groups' 
  • Neil Saunders, Bristol Unversity: 'Exceptional permutation groups of order p5' 
  • Ian Short, The Open University: 'Continued fractions, discrete semigroups and hyperbolic geometry' 
  • Maurice Chiodo, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland: 'Degrees of undecidability in group theory' 
  • Brad Baxter, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Spherical averages OR fun with Haar Measure' 
  • Richard Mycroft, Birmingham: 'A random version of Sperner' 

2014

  • Andris Abakuks, Birkbeck, University of London: 'The Synoptic problem: binary time series and hidden Markov models' 
  • Emilio Pierro, Birkbeck, University of London: 'The Möbius function of the small Ree groups' 
  • Pierre-Philippe Dechant, University of York: 'Rank 3 root systems/Coxeter groups induce (the exceptional) rank 4 root systems/Coxeter groups via a new Clifford spinor construction' 
  • Jeroen Schillewaert, Imperial College London: 'Veronesean representations of Moufang planes' 
  • Jason Semeraro, University of Bristol: 'Puzzle groups' 
  • Doug Stinson, University of Waterloo: 'Techniques for key predistribution in networks' 
  • Alex Kushpel, University of Leicester 'Pricing of basket options' 
  • Simone Severini, University College London: 'Some open problems in combinatorics and graph theory related to quantum physics' 
  • Ian Goldberg, University of Waterloo: 'Optimally robust private information retrieval' 
  • Michalis Sialaros, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Let's talk about Euclid in the UK at last' 

2013

  • Ian Leary, University of Southampton: 'Platonic polygonal complexes' 
  • Rosalba Radice, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Copula bivariate binary models to control for residual and unobserved confounding' 
  • Tony Nixon, Lancaster University: 'Frameworks, surfaces and global rigidity' 
  • Caroline Colijn, Imperial College: 'Novel tools to analyse pathogen phylogenies' 
  • Oded Lachish, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Improved competitive ratio for the Matroid Secretary Problem' 
  • Nick Gill, The Open University: 'The width of a finite simple group' 
  • Ivo Hedtke, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg: 'Fast matrix multiplication'

2012

  • Andrew Treglown, Queen Mary University: 'Perfect matchings in hypergraphs' 
  • Alastair Litterick, Imperial College London: 'Reducibility in exceptional algebraic groups' 
  • Sean Murphy, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'Approximate greatest common divisor lattices' 
  • Amarpreet Rattan, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Factorizations in the symmetric group and induction methods' 
  • Serafina Cuomo, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Numeracy in classical Greece: Questions and problems' 
  • Nick Bingham, Imperial College London: 'Aspects of prediction theory' 
  • Elisabeth Larsson, Uppsala Universitet: 'Radial basis function approximation methods for solving PDEs' 
  • Mark Wildon, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'Character deflations, wreath products and Foulkes' Conjecture' 
  • Robert Brignall, The Open University: 'Applications and studies in modular decomposition' 
  • Peter Rowley, University of Manchester: 'Local fusion groups' 

2011

  • Jing Xu, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Modelling covariance structure for incomplete multivariate longitudinal data' 
  • Nathan Barker, University of Newcastle: 'Richard Thompson's Groups F, T and V' 
  • Matthew Fayers, Queen Mary, University of London: 'Decomposable Specht modules' 
  • Maximilien Gadouleau, Queen Mary, University of London: 'Combinatorial representations' 
  • Doug Stinson, University of Waterloo: 'New combinatorial techniques for user-private information retrieval' 
  • Ben Fairbairn, Birkbeck, University of London: 'How to make a (complex) doughnut real(ly) nice' 
  • Tom Cowhig, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Monogenic quasigroups and loops: the good, the bad and the (not necessarily) ugly' 
  • John Britnell, University of Bristol: 'Commuting classes of matrices' 
  • Jason Crampton, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'Practical constructions for the efficient cryptographic enforcement of interval-based access control policies' 
  • Professor Keith Martin, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'The rise and fall and rise of combinatorial key predistribution' 
  • Professor Basil Hiley, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Complex numbers, quaternions, noninons etc, orthogonal and symplectic Clifford algebras: Geometric algebras for quantum mechanics' 
  • Professor Simon Blackburn, Royal Holloway, University of London: 'K-radius sequences' 
  • Maura Paterson, Birkbeck, University of London: 'Constructing retransmission permutation arrays' 
  • Paul Brown, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg: 'Vertex-deleted subgraphs and common cards'