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. 

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.

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.

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

Geometry, PDE, and Relativity are subjects that have shown intriguing interactions in the past several decades, while simultaneously diverging, each with an ever growing number of branches. Recently, several major breakthroughs have been made in each of these fields using techniques and ideas from the others. 

This program is aimed at connecting various branches of Geometry, PDE, and Relativity and at enhancing collaborations across these disciplines and will include four main topics: Geometric Flows, Geometric problems in Mathematical Relativity, Global Riemannian Geometry, and Minimal Submanifolds. Specifically the program focuses on a central goal, which is to advance our knowledge toward Riemannian (sub)manifolds under geometric conditions, such as curvature lower bounds, by developing techniques in, for example, geometric flows and minimal submanifolds and further fostering new connections.

“Plateau’s Memory ” (by A. van der Net): A soap film with singularities

This program sits at the intersection between differential geometry and analysis but also connects to several other adjacent mathematical fields and to theoretical physics. Differential geometry aims to answer questions about very regular geometric objects (smooth Riemannian manifolds) using the tools of differential calculus. A fundamental object is the curvature tensor of a Riemannian metric: an algebraically complicated object that involves 2nd partial derivatives of the metric. Many questions in differential geometry can therefore be translated into questions about the existence or properties of the solutions of systems of (often) nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). The PDE systems that arise in geometry have historically stimulated the development of powerful new analytic methods. In most cases the nonlinearity of these systems makes ‘closed form’ expressions for a solution impossible: instead more abstract methods must be employed.

The Complementary Program has a limited number of memberships that are open to mathematicians whose interests are not closely related to the core programs; special consideration is given to mathematicians who are partners of an invited member of a core program. 

Geosurface

This three-day workshop will consist of various talks given by prominent women mathematicians on topics of differential geometry and geometric analysis. These will be appropriate for graduate students, postdocs, and researchers in areas related to the two Fall 2024 programs at SLMath.  The workshop will also include activities to promote interaction and connection between participants. This workshop is open to all mathematicians.

The spatial Schwarzschild space with minimal surface boundary foliated by the inverse mean curvature flow

This workshop will include introductory lectures on each of the four main topics of the program: geometric flows, geometric problems in mathematical relativity, global Riemannian geometry, and minimal submanifolds. The workshop will also have semi-expository lectures on recent advances and breakthroughs involving interactions between the four main topics. This will set the stage and provide important context for the semester-long program itself. 

This workshop aims to prepare the participants for the main program: Special Geometric Structures and Analysis.
There will be introductory lectures to recent results in geometry and analysis; more precisely in Kähler geometry, special holonomy, microlocal analysis and geometric measure theory.

<p>The Hopf fibration of <span class="math-tex">\(S^3 \space by \space S^1\)</span></p>

This workshop will bring together researchers at the frontiers of geometric analysis and Riemannian geometry, with a focus on recent advances on geometric flows, geometric problems in mathematical relativity, global Riemannian geometry, and minimal submanifolds. These areas have shown highly intriguing interactions in recent years and we expect this workshop will provide a unique opportunity to facilitate these emerging links.

The analysis of solutions to nonlinear geometric PDEs with higher-dimensional singular sets has seen some notable recent advances, but many fundamental questions still remain open. This workshop will bring together a wide array of researchers working in differential geometry, gauge theory, nonlinear PDEs, microlocal analysis, the calculus of variations and geometric measure theory, with the goal of describing recent advances, advertising recent technical breakthroughs and forging new connections.

In June 2023, Burklund, Hahn, Levy, and Schlank surprised the homotopy theory community when they announced a disproof of Ravenel's Telescope Conjecture, a fundamental problem of homotopy theory which had been open for 40 years and was believed to be out of reach. The disproof of the Telescope Conjecture combines some of the most exciting recent developments in homotopy theory. This includes fundamental work on red-shift phenomena and descent in algebraic K-theory, trace methods based on a novel approach to topological Hochschild and cyclic homology, ambidexterity in chromatic homotopy theory, and more.

The workshop will explore this amazing body of work, culminating in its synthesis and ingenious application to disprove the Telescope Conjecture.

The minimum spanning tree of 100,000 uniformly random points. Colors encode graph distance from the root, which is red. Black points are those whose removal would disconnect at least 5% of the points from the rest.

This program is devoted to the study of the probabilistic and statistical properties of such networks. Central tools include graphon theory for dense graphs, local weak convergence for sparse graphs, and scaling limits for the critical behavior of graphs or stochastic processes on them. The program is aimed at pure and applied mathematicians interested in network problems.

Extremal combinatorics concerns itself with problems about how large or small a finite collection of objects can be while satisfying certain conditions. Questions of this type arise naturally across mathematics, so this area has close connections and interactions with a broad array of other fields, including number theory, group theory, model theory, probability, statistical physics, optimization, and theoretical computer science.

AI-generated interpretation of a random network

This two-day workshop will bring together researchers from discrete mathematics, probability theory, theoretical computer science, and statistics to explore topics at their interface. The focus will be on probability and statistics of random discrete structures, as well as their applications, including in computer science and physical systems. The workshop will celebrate academic and gender diversity, bringing together women and men at junior and senior levels of their careers from mathematics, physics, and computer science.

Visualization of a network constructed using simple probabilistic rules, showing the emergence of hubs and other macroscopic network phenomenon. From https://graph-tool.skewed.de

Networks, graph driven algorithms, and dynamics on graphs such as epidemics, random walks and centrality measures all play a major role, both in our daily lives as well as many scientific and engineering disciplines. This introductory workshop will bring together experts and junior researchers in combinatorics, probability, and statistics to share a broad vision of major challenges and objectives, with a primary focus on models of random graphs and their limits, network inference, dynamic processes on networks and algorithms and optimization on random structures. 

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together promising early-career researchers in extremal combinatorics who are women or from underrepresented minorities so that they can meet with, forge connections with, and be inspired by the leading figures in the area. The workshop will include lectures, time for collaborative research, and an informal panel discussion session among female and minority researchers on career issues.

This workshop will feature leading experts in several major areas of graph theory, including extremal, probabilistic and structural aspects of the field. Introductory lectures will form an important part of the program, providing background and motivation, and aimed at a general mathematical audience. Complementing these, research talks will share exciting recent developments in graph theory.

In recent years techniques from harmonic analysis viz. projection theorems have found striking applications in finitary analysis on homogenous spaces. Such quantitative results have many potential applications to analytic number theory. This workshop will bring together researchers in these areas to further explore these connections.

A degree 7 curve passing through 35 points in the plane

Many exciting breakthroughs in combinatorics involve innovative applications of techniques from a wide range of areas such as harmonic analysis, polynomial and linear algebraic methods, spectral graph theory, and representation theory. This workshop will present recent developments in this area and facilitate discussions of research problems.

Recovering communities in a network.

In a growing number of applications, one needs to analyze and interpret data coming from massive networks. The statistical problems arising from such applications lead to important mathematical challenges: building novel probabilistic models, understanding the possibilities and limitations for statistical detection and inference, designing efficient algorithms, and understanding the inherent limitations of fast algorithms. The workshop will bring together leading researchers in combinatorial statistics, machine learning, and random graphs in the hope of cross-fertilization of ideas.

SLMath's Summer Research in Mathematics (SRiM) program provides space, funding, and the opportunity for in-person collaboration to small groups of mathematicians, including women and gender-expansive individuals, whose ongoing research may have been disproportionately affected by various obstacles including family obligations, professional isolation, or access to funding. Through this effort, SLMath aims to mitigate the obstacles faced by these groups, improve the odds of research project completion, and deepen their research experience. The ultimate goal of this program is to enhance the mathematical sciences as a whole by positively affecting the research and careers of all of its participants and assisting their efforts to maintain involvement in the research community.

<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.

<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.

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. 

ADJOINT is a yearlong program that provides opportunities for U.S. mathematicians – especially those from the African Diaspora – to conduct collaborative research on topics at the forefront of mathematical and statistical research. Participants will spend two weeks taking part in an intensive collaborative summer session at SLMath (formerly MSRI). The two-week summer session for ADJOINT 2025 will take place June 16-27, 2025 in Berkeley, California. Researchers can participate in either of the following ways: (1) joining ADJOINT small groups under the guidance of some of the nation's foremost mathematicians and statisticians to expand their research portfolio into new areas, or (2) applying to Self-ADJOINT as part of an existing or newly-formed independent research group to work on a new or established research project. Throughout the following academic year, the program provides conference and travel support to increase opportunities for collaboration, maximize researcher visibility, and engender a sense of community among participants. 

<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.

<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.

This two week school on Noncommutative Algebraic Geomery will be held at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.  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. 

<p>The traditional scientific method cycle, with Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, its concievers in the center, alongside formal and statistical AI machinary, as a propsective evolution of the method.&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;</p>

The summer school aims to expose participants to formal methods that can facilitate principled scientific discovery. The school will cover some of the basic automated statistical inference (in the form of machine learning techniques) and reasoning methods that are commonly used in scientific discovery, as well as novel techniques developed to tackle open questions and issues. This summer school will address novel computational methods for scientific discovery and focus on fusing axiomatic knowledge and experimental data to enable principled derivations of models of natural phenomena along with certificates of the consistency of these models with background knowledge specified as axioms.

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.

Top: Neutrino interactions and neutrino-atom interactions. Bottom: Collision of two "waves"

The focus of the proposed program is on so-called kinetic equations, describing the evolution of the of many-particle interacting systems. These models have the form of statistical flows, with their solutions being either a single or multiple point probability density functions or measures, supported in a space of attributes. The attributes are problem-dependent and can be molecular velocity, energy, opinion, wealth, and many others. The flow then predicts the evolution of the probability measure in time, position in space, and the interchanging of the particles' states by the transition probability.

The program will strive to give an overview of the novel mathematical tools used in kinetic theory through a broad range of classical and more recent applications.

Solution to the geometric stochastic heat equation on the sphere at a fixed time

The topic Singular Stochastic Partial Differential Equations (singular SPDE) has rapidly grown to be an active research area at the interface of Stochastic Analysis and PDEs on one hand, and Mathematical Physics on the other hand. During this decade we have witnessed a series of tremendous breakthroughs in the solution theories of SPDEs, universality problems, large-scale asymptotic behaviors of solutions, and foundational relations with quantum field theories and geometry. Many long-standing problems have been resolved via newly developed methods – notably the theories of regularity structures and paracontrolled distributions – and deep connections with other fields are quickly emerging.

It is a natural time to convene a large-scale semester program.

The Connections workshop will bring together leading experts working at the intersection of kinetic theory and stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs).

<p>This figure depicts dynamics of flows on convex cocompact hyperbolic 3-manifolds; where the girl is a traveller along a horocycle.</p>

This research program will bring together two intellectual communities that have made significant advances in the study of discrete subgroups of higher rank semisimple Lie groups: the homogeneous dynamics community and the community studying geometric structures and Anosov groups.

The stable and unstable foliations near a singular orbit of a pseudo- Anosov flow in 3 dimensions. Courtesy Michael Landry.

Low dimensional topology is a meeting place for many objects and ideas from diverse areas of mathematics, including foliation theory, geometry, and smooth and conformal dynamics.   For instance, many foliations on 3-manifolds admit transverse flows, connecting (local) leafwise homeomorphisms to flow dynamics and the mapping class groups of the leaves.  Leafwise conformal or hyperbolic structures can be approached through Teichmüller theory, and connect again to one-dimensional dynamics through "universal circles" organizing compactifications of all the leaves or of the flow space.  Many of these ideas originate in work of Thurston but in recent years have diverged and are ripe for reconnection.  

The program will bring together experts in all these fields together with younger researchers, who together can form new connections and open new areas for exploration.

The joint introductory workshop for the programs in Geometry and Dynamics for Discrete Subgroups of Higher Rank Lie Groups and Topological and Geometric Structures in Low Dimensions will feature lectures introducing subjects of interest to both programs, including Teichmuller Theory, geometry in higher rank, foliations and flows, Anosov groups and thermodynamic formalism,  mapping class groups, counting and equidistribution, and related topics. Minicourses will be targeted at early career researchers as well as specialists looking to find connections between the different subjects.

Foliations around a pseudo-Anosov singularity (Image credit: Chi Cheuk Tsang)

This workshop will bring together ideas from diverse areas of mathematics that meet in the setting of geometry and topology in low dimensions.  This includes the study of flows, foliations, and fibrations of three-manifolds and the related study of geometry (e.g. hyperbolic or conformal structures) of the manifolds and of the leaves or fibers, and their mapping class groups.  This is a rich and interconnected area and many adjacent topics will also be featured.

This workshop will focus on recent advances on geometric and dynamical approaches to the study of discrete subgroups of higher rank Lie groups and their deformation spaces. The goal will be to present results and exchange ideas from different areas of mathematics, and we hope to create bonds between several different mathematical communities.

<p>Illustrated by Rok Gregoric</p>

The upcoming SLMath program is organized around key themes of “higher” quantization and mirror symmetry as they impact and elucidate a wide variety of questions in representation theory. The program will bring together experts and young researchers from algebra, geometry, physics and number theory to help develop and disseminate this unified vision of a rapidly evolving field, exploring the mathematical consequences of the examples, structures, and dualities discovered in physics.

Tremendous progress has been made using motivic techniques in geometric questions for affine algebraic varieties, especially those involving algebraic vector bundles. Computations in classical algebraic topology have been improved by motivic techniques, e.g., related to the problem of computing homotopy groups of spheres. Moreover, the theory has identified new structures of interest in arithmetic situations. Transformative recent progress in motivic homotopy theory has only broadened the scope for potential applications of motivic techniques, as well as new avenues of interaction with other areas of mathematics. This program will build on previous successes, explaining the tools that have been developed and how to use them, analyzing questions of the sort described above and identifying new domains where motivic techniques will be successful.

Tropical surfaces. Images courtesy of Lars Allermann.

Tropical geometry can be viewed as a degenerate version of algebraic geometry,where the role of algebraic varieties is played by certain polyhedral complexes. As the degeneration process, called tropicalization, preserves many fundamental properties, tropical geometry provides important bridges and an exchange of methods between algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry and convex geometry; these links have been extremely fruitful and gave rise to remarkable results during the last 20 years. The main focus of the program will be on the most significant recent developments in tropical geometry and its applications. The following topics are particularly influential in the area and will be central in the program:

• real aspects of tropical geometry;
• tropical mirror symmetry and non-Archimedean geometry;
• tropical phenomena in symplectic geometry;
• matroids, combinatorial and algebraic aspects;
• tropical moduli spaces;
• tropical geometry and A1-homotopy theory.

Inverse problems (IP) arise in all fields of science and technology where a cause for an observed or desired effect is sought. In the last 50 years or so there has been substantial progress in the mathematical understanding of these problems but many questions remain open. The mathematics of these problems involves many areas in Mathematics including PDE, differential geometry, integral geometry, probability, statistics, complex analysis, numerical analysis, mathematical physics, data science, etc. Since the 2010 program at the then-Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (now Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute), there has been significant progress in inverse problems; many of the advances can be traced back to that program. However, there are still deep open questions remaining as well, some of which are discussed in this proposal. New research topics include the connection between IP and machine learning, IP for nonlinear equations, IP for nonlocal operators, and connections between statistics and IP.