IPAM will host a conference showcasing the achievements of Latinx in the mathematical sciences. The goal of the conference is to encourage Latinx to pursue careers in the mathematical sciences, to promote the advancement of Latinx currently in the discipline, to showcase research being conducted by Latinx at the forefront of their fields, and, finally, to build a community around shared academic interests. The conference will be held on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA.

Activist Bob Moses argued that mathematical literacy was the next civil rights front line. The 2025 CIME workshop will explore what mathematical literacy might mean and why it still matters for citizenship now and in the future. The workshop’s long-term impact relies on the participation of research mathematicians, mathematics educators, educational researchers, teachers of school mathematics, and policymakers working across different perspectives and roles to foster collaboration that will raise the floor for mathematical literacy for citizenship now and in the future.

The overarching goal of the 2025 Workshop on Mathematics and Racial Justice is to extend our explorations of how the mathematical sciences plays a central role in today's movement for racial justice. We will examine the various systems identified in the 2021 Math and Racial Justice workshop and consider the impact of these systems on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities.  This workshop defines racial justice as the result of intentional, active and sustained anti-racist practices that identify and dismantle racist structures and policies that operate to oppress, disenfranchise, harm, and devalue BIPOC people. This workshop will bring together mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, STEM educators, and members of the general public interested in using the tools of these disciplines to critically examine and eradicate racial disparities in society. Researchers with expertise or interest in problems at the intersection of the mathematical sciences and racial justice are strongly encouraged to participate. Thanks to funding from the Mathematical Sciences Institutes Diversity Initiative, there is financial support available for a limited number of attendees. This in-person workshop will take place over three days, May 7-9, 2025, at SLMath in Berkeley, CA. The themes for this year’s workshop are 1) developing racial literacy, 2) science and technology studies, 3) law and policy, and 4) education.

<p>A display of the evolution of an Erdos-Renyi random graph .&nbsp;</p>

Random graphs are ubiquitous in modern probability theory. Besides their intrinsic mathematical beauty, they are also used to model complex networks. In the early 2000’s, I. Benjamini and O. Schramm introduced a mathematical framework in which they endowed the set of locally finite rooted connected graphs with the structure of a Polish space, called the local topology. The goal of this summer school is to introduce the framework of local limits of random graphs, the concepts of Benjamini-Schramm (or unbiased) limits and unimodularity, as well as the most important applications. The lectures will be delivered by Nicolas Curien (Prof. Paris-Saclay University) and Justin Salez (Prof. Université Paris-Dauphine) and will be complemented by many problem sessions, where students will work in small groups under the guidance of teaching assistants, who are researchers in the field. 

The Summer Schools in Probability are a highlight of Canadian probability and are internationally significant.  Launched by PIMS in 2004, the school takes the form of two main 4-week courses along with three mini-courses. The schools have played a major role in the development of an exceptionally strong community of young probabilist in Canada, North America and overseas. This will be the 13th time this school has run.

<p>A minimal free resolution supported on a simplicial complex</p>

The 2025 SMS will allow graduate students to learn about a number of recent trends and advances in the field of commutative algebra. The aim of the SMS is to provide an “on-ramp” for graduate students interested in algebra, combinatorics, and/or algebraic combinatorics to learn more about commutative algebra’s interaction with these fields. The introductory courses will introduce fundamental skills in commutative algebra, the more intermediate courses will expose students to cutting-edge research in the field. The school will focus on four topics within commutative algebra: Combinatorial Methods, Homological Methods, Computational Methods, and Characteristic p Methods. The SMS will provide both a series of introductory lectures and intermediate/advanced lectures from leaders in one of the four areas. The lectures will include a series of problem sessions that will allow participants to develop and hone their skills in these areas, which will be especially helpful for new people to the field. Participants will be encouraged to work collaboratively, both to enhance their own mathematical networks as well as to promote future collaborations beyond the school.

This summer school offers an exceptional opportunity for participants to delve into the intricate realm of statistical optimal transport theory. This captivating field stands at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, drawing from a rich tapestry of mathematical insights from diverse subjects, including partial differential equations, stochastic analysis, convex geometry, statistics, and machine learning, crafting a vibrant and interdisciplinary landscape. The foremost objective of this summer school is to create a dynamic learning environment that unites students from diverse backgrounds such as PDE theory, probability, or optimal transport. 

The MSRI-UP summer program is designed to serve a diverse group of undergraduate students who would like to conduct research in the mathematical sciences.

In 2025, MSRI-UP will focus on Quantitative Justice. The research program will be led by Dr. Omayra Y. Ortega, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Sonoma State University.

From micro to macro, sea ice supports life in the polar regions. Left: illustration of the porous sea ice microstructure, home to a microbial community of ice endemic organisms including bacteria and algae. Right: two penguins on Antarctic sea ice.

In this summer school, students will be introduced to mathematical and computational modeling of sea ice and polar ecosystems in a warming climate. As a material, sea ice is a multiscale composite structured on length scales ranging from tenths of millimeters to tens of kilometers. From tiny brine inclusions and surface melt ponds of increasing complexity, to ice floes of varying sizes in a seawater host, a principal challenge is how to find sea ice effective properties that are relevant to larger scale climate and process models, given data on smaller scale structures. Similarly, the sea ice ecosystem ranges from algae living in the brine inclusions to charismatic megafauna like penguins and polar bears, whose diets depend critically, down the line, on the tiny sea ice extremophiles. The dynamics of sea ice microbial communities are regulated by the physics of the ice microstructure, and, in turn, many of these microbes modify their environment by secreting extracellular polymeric substances. In addition to sea ice and its ecosystems, we will consider mathematical modeling of the broader climate system, including energy balance models, climate and ecological tipping points, and global circulation models.

<p>A plane partition and an hourglass plabic graph</p>

This school will introduce students to a range of powerful combinatorial tools used to understand algebraic objects ranging from the homogeneous coordinate ring of the Grassmannian to symmetric functions.   The summer school will center around two main lecture series "Webs and Plabic Graphs" and "Vertex Models and Applications".   While the exact applications differ, both courses will center on graphical models for algebraic problems closely related to Grassmannian and its generalizations.  This school will be accessible to a wide range of students.  Students will leave the school with a solid grasp of the combinatorics of webs, plabic graphs, and the six-vertex model, an understanding of their algebraic applications, and a taste of current research directions.

<p>The discriminant ∆ detects singular varieties. The picture shows three different scenarios: solutions of quadratic polynomials, cubic plane curves and cubic surfaces.</p>

This summer school will offer a hands-on introduction to discriminants, with a view towards modern applications. Starting from the basics of computational algebraic geometry and toric geometry, the school will gently introduce participants to the foundations of discriminants. A particular emphasis will be put on computing discriminants of polynomial systems using computer algebra software. Then, we will dive into three applications of discriminants: algebraic statistics, geometric modeling, and particle physics. Here, discriminants contribute to the study of maximum likelihood estimation, to finding practical parametrizations of geometric objects, and to computations of scattering amplitudes. We will explain recently discovered unexpected connections between these three applications. In addition to lectures, the summer school will have daily collaborative exercise sessions which will be guided by the teaching assistants and will include software demonstrations.

The school will consist of two courses: Homological Mirror Symmetry and Algebraic Models for Spaces. These courses will be planned and taught by organisers with the help of teaching assistants for the problem sessions. The school will be aimed at a wide range of graduate students, from students with a Bachelor degree to beginning PhD students. The lectures and problem sessions will be complemented by a poster session in week one and a total of four introductory research talks on Friday afternoons. 

One of the core elements of applied mathematics is mathematical modeling consisting of nonlinear equations such as ODEs, and PDEs. A fundamental difficulty which arises is that most nonlinear models cannot be solved in closed form. Computer assisted proofs are at the forefront of modern mathematics and have led to many important recent mathematical advances. They provide a way of melding analytical techniques with numerical methods, in order to provide rigorous statements for mathematical models that could not be treated by either method alone. In this summer school, students will review standard computational and analytical techniques, learn to combine these techniques with more specialized methods of interval arithmetic, and apply these methods to establish rigorous results in otherwise intractable problems

<p>Flats and hyperbolic planes in a higher rank symmetric space</p> Drawn by Steve Trettel.

Lie groups are central objects in modern mathematics; they arise as the automorphism groups of many homogeneous spaces, such as flag manifolds and Riemannian symmetric spaces. Often, one can construct manifolds locally modelled on these homogeneous spaces by taking quotients of their subsets by discrete subgroups of their automorphism groups. Studying such discrete subgroups of Lie groups is an active and growing area of mathematical research. The objective of this summer school is to introduce young researchers to a class of discrete subgroups of Lie groups, called Anosov subgroups.

<p>Laminations arise naturally in hyperbolic geometry and (pseudo-) Anosov flows [Image by Jeffrey Brock]</p>

This school will serve as an introduction to the SLMath semester “Topological and Geometric Structures in Low-Dimensions”.  The school consists of two mini-courses: one on Teichmüller Theory and Hyperbolic 3-Manifolds and the other on Anosov Flows on Geometric 3-Manifolds.  Both topics lie at the interface of low-dimensional geometric topology (specifically, surfaces, foliations, and 3-manifolds) and low-dimensional dynamics.  The first course will be targeted towards students who have completed the standard first year graduate courses in geometry, topology, and analysis while the second course will geared towards more advanced students who are closer to beginning research. However, we expect that all students will benefit from both courses.

While their original aim was to explain the strange behavior of certain magnetic alloys, the study of spin glass models has led to a far-reaching and beautiful physical theory whose techniques have been applied to a myriad of problems in theoretical computer science, statistics, optimization and biology. As many of the physical predictions can be formulated as purely mathematical questions, often extremely hard, about large random systems in high dimensions, in recent decades a new area of research has emerged in probability theory around these problems.

Mathematically, a mean-field spin glass model is a Gaussian process (random function) on the discrete hypercube or the sphere in high dimensions. A fundamental challenge in their analysis is, roughly speaking, to understand the size and structure of their super-level sets as the dimension tends to infinity, which are often studied through smooth objects like the free energy and Gibbs measure whose origin is in statistical physics. The aim of the summer school is to introduce students to landmark results on the latter while emphasizing the techniques and ideas that were developed to obtain them, as well as exposing the students to some recent research topics.

This two week summer school, jointly organized by SLMath with OIST, will offer the following two mini-courses:

1. Measure-theoretical analysis, divergence-measure fields, and nonlinear PDEs of divergence form
   This course will present some recent developments in the theory of divergence-measure fields via measure-theoretic analysis and its applications to the analysis of nonlinear PDEs of conservative form – nonlinear conservation laws.
2. Perron’s method and Wiener-type criteria in the potential theory of elliptic and parabolic PDEs
   This course will present some recent developments precisely characterizing the regularity of the point at ∞ for second order elliptic and parabolic PDEs and broadly extending the role of the Wiener test in classical analysis.

Product of projective lines embedded in projective 3-space

This summer graduate school focuses on modern homological techniques in commutative algebra, specifically those involving multigraded and differential graded structures. These topics have a long and rich history, but neither is generally covered in graduate courses. Moreover, recent developments have exhibited exciting interplay between the two subjects. 

The purpose of the school is to introduce the participants to modern themes on these topics, including Koszul duality for toric varieties and differential graded algebra structures on resolutions. The school will consist of two lectures each day and carefully planned problem sessions designed to reinforce the foundational material, with an emphasis on using computational tools such as the symbolic algebra program Macaulay2. 

ALCF Visualization and Data Analytics Team; Adam Burrows and the Princeton Supernova Theory Group, Princeton University

This summer school will give an accessible introduction to the mathematical study of general relativity, a field which in the past has had barriers to entry due to its interdisciplinary nature, and whose study has been concentrated at specific institutions, to a wider audience of students studying at institutions throughout the U.S., Europe and Greece. Another goal of the summer school will be to demonstrate the common underlying mathematical themes in many problems which traditionally have been studied by separate research communities.

In the last few years, there have been extraordinary developments in many aspects of curve theory. Beginning with many examples in low genus, this summer school will introduce the participants to the background behind these developments in the following areas:

1. moduli spaces of stable curves
2. Brill–Noether theory
3. the extrinsic geometry of the curves in projective space

We will also include an introduction to some open problems at the forefront of these active areas.

This summer school will familiarize students with the basic problems of the mathematical theory of Euclidean quantum fields. The lectures will introduce some of its prominent models and analyze them via the so called “stochastic quantization” methods, involving recently developed stochastic and PDE techniques. This is an area which is highly interdisciplinary combining ideas ranging from the theory of partial differential equations, to stochastic analysis, to mathematical physics. Our goal is to bring together students who are perhaps familiar with some but not all of these subjects and teach them how to integrate these different tools to solve cutting-edge problems of Euclidean quantum field theory.

This summer school provides the mathematical background to recognize Koszul duality in representation theory. The school is especially oriented toward applications in the local Langlands program, with an emphasis on real groups. As Koszul duality patterns have been initially observed in the context of Hecke algebras, our school will also introduce the students to Hecke algebras and their categorifications.

The image of a large sphere isometrically embedded into a small space through a C^1 embedding. (Attributions: E. Bartzos, V. Borrelli, R. Denis, F. Lazarus, D. Rohmer, B. Thibert)

This two week summer school, jointly organized by SLMath with RIKEN, will introduce graduate students to the theory of h-principles.  After building up the theory from basic smooth topology, we will focus on more recent developments of the theory, particularly applications to symplectic and contact geometry, fluid dynamics, and foliation theory.

h-principles in smooth topology (Emmy Murphy)
Riemannian geometry and applications to fluid dynamics (Dominik Inauen)
Contact and symplectic flexibility (Emmy Murphy)
Foliation theory and diffeomorphism groups (Takashi Tsuboi)

This two week summer school, jointly organized by SLMath with IBM Zurich, will introduce students to the mathematics and algorithms used in the design and analysis of quantum-safe cryptosystems. Each week will be dedicated to two of the four families of quantum-safe schemes.

a Calabi-Yau manifold

This summer school will serve as an introduction to the SLMath program "Special geometric structures and analysis". There will be two mini-courses: one in Geometric Measure theory and the other in Microlocal Analysis. The aim is to give the basic notions of two subjects also treated during the program.

This summer school will focus on the introductory notions related to the passage of Newtonian and quantum many-body dynamics to kinetic collisional models of Boltzmann flow models arising in statistical sciences in connection to model reductions when continuum macro dynamics arises; and their numerical schemes associated to transport of kinetic processes in classical and data driven mean field dynamics incorporating recent tools from computational kinetics and data science tools. There will be two sets of lectures: “From Newton to Boltzmann to Fluid dynamics”, and “Kinetic collisional theory in mean field regimes: analysis, discrete approximations, and applications”. Each lecture series will be accompanied by a collaboration session, led by the lecturer and teaching assistants. The purpose of the collaboration sessions is to encourage and strengthen higher-level thinking of the materials taught in the lectures and to direct further reading for interested students. Interactive learning activities will be conducted. For example, students will be given problem sets associated with the lectures and will work in small groups to discuss concepts and/or find solutions to assigned problems. The students will also be encouraged to give oral or poster presentations on their solutions or other materials relevant to the course.

The MSRI-UP summer program is designed to serve a diverse group of undergraduate students who would like to conduct research in the mathematical sciences.

In 2024, MSRI-UP will focus on Mathematical Endocrinology. The research program will be led by Dr. Erica J. Graham, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College.

This school will present various developments in Riemannian and Kähler geometry around the notion of curvature seen as a tool to describe and understand the geometry of the objects. The school will give graduate students the opportunity to learn key ideas and techniques of the field, with an emphasis on solidifying foundations in view of potential future research. The first week will be centered around the question of the existence of Kähler metrics with special curvature properties and the famous Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture. The second week will focus on geometric flows in Riemannian and complex geometry. 

"May 12 Initiative" Annual Workshop

The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath) celebrates the "May 12 Initiative" with a panel discussion and social event open to all on the topic "Being a Woman in Mathematics". This is a hybrid event taking place on Zoom and in person at SLMath. This event is free and open to worldwide participation.

If you plan to participate online, please connect using this LINK.  

The undergraduate mathematics education system remains a huge barrier to college completion and to equity in higher education. The problem in entry level mathematics courses is not a lack of innovation. Numerous projects and institutions have created, piloted, and occasionally replicated effective reform efforts that overcame particular challenges, like the need to improve pedagogical practices or attend to gender equity. The biggest barrier to systemic reform – implementing many of these research-backed innovations at scale – is a structural one, particularly at large research-focused institutions. This workshop will bring together a group of stakeholders to explore a new avenue for change, the rise of teaching-focused faculty at research-intensive institutions who increasingly influence introductory coursework. By creating a network that connects these faculty across institutions, change at scale across 50, 100, or even more institutions becomes possible – on issues ranging from pedagogy to equity to curricular innovation. Creating such structures would also allow for bringing future innovations to scale much more quickly than is currently possible.

Drawing by Tina Zhang.

This workshop is about the recent MIP*=RE result from quantum computational complexity, and the resulting resolution of the Connes embedding problem from the theory of von Neumann algebras. MIP*=RE connects the disparate areas of computational complexity theory, quantum information, operator algebras, and approximate representation theory. The aim of this workshop is to bridge this divide, by giving an in-depth exposition of the techniques used in the proof of MIP*=RE, and highlighting perspectives on the MIP*=RE result from operator algebras and approximate representation theory. In particular, this workshop will highlight connections with group stability, something that has not been covered in previous workshops. In addition to increasing understanding of the MIP*=RE proof, we hope that this will open up further applications of the ideas behind MIP*=RE in operator algebras.

Several executions of a 3-dimensional sumcheck protocol with a random order of directions (thanks to Dev Ojha for creating the diagram)

Proofs are at the foundations of mathematics. Viewed through the lens of theoretical computer science, verifying the correctness of a mathematical proof is a fundamental computational task. Indeed, the P versus NP problem, which deals precisely with the complexity of proof verification, is one of the most important open problems in all of mathematics.

The complexity-theoretic study of proof verification has led to exciting reenvisionings of mathematical proofs. For example, probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs) admit local-to-global structure that allows verifying a proof by reading only a minuscule portion of it. As another example, interactive proofs allow for verification via a conversation between a prover and a verifier, instead of the traditional static sequence of logical statements. The study of such proof systems has drawn upon deep mathematical tools to derive numerous applications to the theory of computation and beyond.

In recent years, such probabilistic proofs received much attention due to a new motivation, delegation of computation, which is the emphasis of this summer school. This paradigm admits ultra-fast protocols that allow one party to check the correctness of the computation performed by another, untrusted, party. These protocols have even been realized within recently-deployed technology, for example, as part of cryptographic constructions known as succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs).

This summer school will provide an introduction to the field of probabilistic proofs and the beautiful mathematics behind it, as well as prepare students for conducting cutting-edge research in this area.

This summer school will introduce graduate students to sketching-based approaches to computational linear and multi-linear algebra. Sketching here refers to a set of techniques for compressing a matrix, to one with fewer rows, or columns, or entries, usually via various kinds of random linear maps. We will discuss matrix computations, tensor algebras, and such sketching techniques, together with their applications and analysis.

The goal of the summer school is for the students to first become familiar with the concept of concentration of measure in different settings (Euclidean, Riemannian and discrete), and the main open problems surrounding it. The students will later become familiar with the proof techniques that involve the different types of localization and obtain expertise on the ways to apply the localization techniques. After attending the graduate school, the students are expected to have the necessary background that would give them a chance to both conduct research around open problems in concentration of measure, find new applications to existing localization techniques and perhaps also develop new localization techniques.

Schur quartic x 4−xy3 = z 4−zu3 and several of the 64 lines that it contains

Derived algebraic geometry is an ‘update’ of algebraic geometry using ‘derived’ (roughly speaking, homological) techniques. This requires recasting the very foundations of the field: rings have to be replaced by differential graded algebras (or other forms of derived rings), categories by higher categories, and so on. The result is a powerful set of new tools, useful both within algebraic geometry and in related areas. The school serves as an introduction to these techniques, focusing on their applications.

The school is built around two related courses on geometric (‘derived spaces’) and categorical (‘derived categories’) aspects of the theory. Our goal is to explain the key ideas and concepts, while trying to keep technicalities to a minimum.

The overarching goal of this summer school is to expose the students both to modern forms of unsupervised learning — in the form of geometrical and topological data analysis — and to supervised learning — in the form of (deep) neural networks applied to regression/classification problems. The organizers have opted for a lighter exposure to a broader range of topics. Using the metaphor of a meal, we are offering 2 + 2 samplers — geometry and topology for data analysis + theoretical and practical deep learning — rather than 1 + 1 main dishes. The main goal, thus, is to inspire the students to learn more about one or several of the topics covered in the school.

The expected learning outcomes for students attending the school are the following:

1. An introduction to how concepts and tools from geometry and topology can be leveraged to perform data analysis in situations where the data are not labeled.

2. An introduction to recent and ongoing theoretical and methodological/practical developments in the use of neural networks for data analysis (deep learning).

Soap bubble: equilibrium solution of the rescaled mean curvature flow and constant curvature surface.

This graduate summer school will introduce students to two important and inter-related fields of differential geometry: geometric flows and minimal surfaces.

Geometric flows have had far reaching influences on numerous branches of mathematics and other scientific disciplines. An outstanding example is the completion of Hamilton’s Ricci flow program by Perelman, leading to the resolution of the Poincare conjecture and Thurston’s geometrization conjecture for 3-manifolds. In this part of the summer school, students will be guided through basic topics and ideas in the study of geometric flows.

Since Penrose used variations of volume to formulate and study black holes in general relativity (in his Nobel prize-winning work), the intriguing connections between minimal surfaces and general relativity have been a strong driving force for the modern developments of both research areas. This part of the summer school will introduce students to the basic theory of minimal submanifolds and its applications in Riemannian geometry and general relativity.

The curriculum of this program will be accessible and will have a broad appeal to graduate students from a variety of mathematical areas, introducing some of the latest developments in each area and the remaining open problems therein, while simultaneously emphasizing their synergy.

This two week school will focus on spectral theory of periodic, almost-periodic, and random operators.  The main aim of this school is to teach the students who work in one of these areas, methods used in parallel problems, explain the similarities between all these areas and show them the `big picture'.

This school is associated with an upcoming research program at MSRI under the same title. The goal of the school is to equip students unfamiliar with these topics with the mathematical and theoretical computer science toolbox that forms the foundation of market and mechanism design.