OUTREACH PROGRAMS

	Undergraduate Network Meeting October 23, 2010 Bahen Building Room BA 1190, UToronto (map) Organizers: Richard Cerezo, (mu(at)math.toronto.edu) and Sergio Da Silva, (sergio.dasilva(at)utoronto.ca) Faculty Advisor: Matthias Neufang
Confirmed Speakers: Boris Khesin (Toronto), Spyros Alexakis (Toronto), Maung Min-Oo (McMaster), Deping Ye (Fields) Next meeting dates November 27, location TBA

Undergraduate Network includes a series of mathematical talks aimed at undergraduates, and organized into a network involving the local universities. We will be stating with trial run of four events for next year with faculty members as consultants.

Schedule

10:00 a.m. Introduction: Matthias Neufang
Deping Ye, Fields Institute
Invitation to Geometry of Convexity and Quantum States in High Dimension

11:00 a.m. Break

11:15 a.m. Spyros Alexakis, University of Toronto
Minimal surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space and renormalized area
12:00 p.m. Lunch

1:00 p.m. Boris Khesin, University of Toronto
Nondegenerate curves and the Kortweg-de Vries equation

1:45 p.m. Break

2:15 p.m. Maung Min-Oo, McMaster University
The Sign of Curvature

3:00 p.m. Panel Discussion

Abstracts

Deping Ye, Fields Institute
Invitation to Geometry of Convexity and Quantum States in High Dimension

Spyros Alexakis, University of Toronto
Minimal surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space and renormalized area

Boris Khesin, University of Toronto
Nondegenerate curves and the Kortweg-de Vries equation
A plane curve is called nondegenerate if it has no inflection points. How many classes of closed nondegenerate curves exist on a sphere? We are going to see how this geometric problem, solved in 1970, reappeared along with its generalizations in the context of the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. We will also discuss how the KdV equation can be viewed as the geodesic flow on an infinite-dimensional group.

Maung Min-Oo, McMaster University
The Sign of Curvature
In this talk I will first introduce the notion of curvature, the most fundamental invariant in Geometry. I will describe the three main types of curvatures that Riemannian geometers use: sectional, Ricci and scalar. The main theme of the talk is then to explore the significance of the sign of curvature. The message is that imposing conditions on the curvature has global topological implications. I will begin with a selected survey of some classical results. I will then give a rough indication of the basic ideas and techniques used to establish these results. I will end my talk with a few open problems that I find interesting.

List of Confirmed Participants as of October 23, 2010

Full Name	University/Affiliation
Aftab, Umar	University of Waterloo
Cerezo, Richard	University of Toronto
Charlesworth, Ian	University of Waterloo
Chi, Hanci	University of Waterloo
Chow, Kevin	University of Waterloo
Cousins, Gregory	McMaster University
da Silva, Sergio	University of Toronto
Dranovski, Anne	University of Toronto
Fan, Wei	University of Toronto
Gerlings, Adam	McMaster University
Giannone, Elicia	University of Toronto
Ginsberg, Dan	University of Toronto
Gold, Nathan	York University
Grajo, Ramon	University of Toronto
Han, Changho	University of Toronto
Jami, Rafshan	University of Toronto
Jung, Juno	University of Waterloo
Kabir, Ifaz	University of Waterloo
Lee, Seung-Jae	University of Toronto
Letang, Kelsey	University of Toronto
Li, Qian	University of Toronto
McLaughlin, David	University of Waterloo
Milcak, Juraj	University of Toronto
Neymanov, Tural	University of Toronto
Park, Sang Hee	University of Toronto
Pistone, Jamie	University of Toronto
Rush, Stephen	University of Guelph
Shehata, Abdul	McMaster University
Song, Danhua	University of Waterloo
Sourisseau, Matt	University of Toronto
Sun, Sarah	University of Waterloo
Tour, Dennis	McMaster University
Walton, Laura	McMaster University
Yalcinkaya, Eyup	McMaster University
Yee, Yohan	McMaster University
Yin, Charles	McMaster University
Zhang, Hanyu	University of Waterloo
Zhu, Ren	University of Waterloo

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