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# Departmental Colloquia

Our department is proud to host weekly colloquium talks featuring research by leading mathematicians from around the world. Most colloquia are held on Fridays at 4pm in Parker Hall, Room 250 (unless otherwise advertised) with refreshments preceding at 3:30pm in Parker Hall, Room 244.

DMS Colloquium: Aris Winger

Feb 26, 2021 04:00 PM

Speaker: Aris Winger (Georgia Gwinnett College)

Title: Equity and Advocating in the Mathematics Classrooms and Departments

Abstract: How do we create mathematical spaces within our classroom that validate and value all students?  What are the steps that we can personally take that will transform the mathematical experience in our classroom for marginalized students?   In this talk, participants will engage in an interactive conversation about the challenges presented when we start to radically imagine different mathematical spaces from one where, for too long, have been marginalizing for too many people.

Dr. Winger also has a new book out about advocating for students of color in mathematics.  Here is the link for this book : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QC3SHFG/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_cD37FbHZ6ZRJD in case you would like to pick up the book.

Zoom link:  https://auburn.zoom.us/j/83289004804

Zoom host: Nedret Billor

Note from host:  As you may already know that we have an ongoing collaborative NSF project led by CU Denver, University of Memphis, and AU (led by Rodger, Stone, Merchant, and  Billor), titled Promoting Success in Undergraduate Mathematics through Graduate Teacher Training (PSUM-GTT) since 2019 in our department. As a part of this  project, we have scheduled several Auburn critical issues seminar series which would be beneficial for all of us in our department. The first Zoom seminar will be given by Dr. Aris Winger from Georgia Gwinnett College.

DMS Colloquium: Gregory Puleo

Feb 19, 2021 04:00 PM

Speaker: Gregory Puleo

Title: A story about graph saturation

Abstract: The classical extremal problem in graph theory asks: given some graph $$H$$, what is the largest number of edges in an $$n$$-vertex graph with no subgraph isomorphic to $$H$$? In this talk, we will discuss the saturation problem in graph theory, a variant on the classical extremal problem.  In contrast to the extremal problem, for which powerful general results are known, relatively little is known about graph saturation. While general upper bounds on the saturation number are known, a nontrivial lower bound has been elusive. Recently, Alex Cameron and I succeeded at proving a lower bound on the saturation number that is asymptotically sharp on a large class of graphs. I will discuss both the mathematical details of this result and the story of how it came to be.

DMS Colloquium: Thi-Thao-Phuong Hoang

Feb 12, 2021 04:00 PM

Speaker: Thi-Thao-Phuong Hoang

Title: Efficient time-stepping methods for nonlinear evolution problems

Abstract: Numerical modeling of geophysical flows is challenging due to the presence of various coupled processes that occur at different spatial and temporal scales. It is critical for the numerical schemes to efficiently capture such a wide range of scales in both space and time to produce accurate and robust simulations over long time horizons. In this talk, I will present advanced time-stepping methods for the rotating shallow water equations discretized on spatial meshes with variable resolutions. Two different approaches will be considered, and both allow spatially dependent time step sizes to be used for time integration in different regions of the computational domain. The first approach is a fully explicit local time-stepping algorithm based on strong stability preserving Runge-Kutta schemes. The second approach, namely the localized exponential time differencing method, is based on spatial domain decomposition and exponential time integrators, which makes possible the use of much larger time step sizes compared to explicit schemes and avoids solving nonlinear systems. Numerical results on various test cases are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods.

DMS Colloquium: W. James Lewis

Feb 05, 2021 04:00 PM

Speaker: W. James "Jim" Lewis (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Title: The Role of the Mathematics Department in the Mathematical Education of Teachers

Abstract: The AMS publication Towards Excellence: Leading a Doctoral Mathematics Department in the 21st  Century opens with the sentence, “We have a simple message: To ensure their institution’s commitment to excellence in mathematics research, doctoral departments must pursue excellence in their instructional programs.” The CBMS publication The Mathematical Education of Teachers II recommends that at institutions that prepare teachers, teacher education should be “an important part of a mathematics department’s mission.”

In this talk, we will report on work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to improve the mathematical education of teachers as well as efforts to improve how we teach mathematics to freshmen.

Faculty host: Huajun Huang
Co-host: Gary Martin (Auburn University, Curriculum and Teaching)

Zoom link: aub.ie/lewis   (835 7247 0290)

Brief BIO
W. James “Jim” Lewis, Ph.D. is Aaron Douglas professor of mathematics and Director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Computer Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). At UNL, Lewis has served as President of the UNL Faculty Senate, President of the UNL chapter of AAUP, and chair of the Department of Mathematics (1988-2003). During the time he served as chair of his department, the department won the University-wide Department Teaching Award and an NSF Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. He has received many teaching awards including the University’s Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award, membership in UNL’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers, and the Carnegie Foundation’s 2010 Nebraska Professor of the Year. He is also the recipient of the UNL Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women Award for his support of opportunities for women in the mathematical sciences and UNL’s Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award. In 2015, Lewis was recognized by the Mathematical Association of America’s Gung and Hu Award for Distinguished Service and the American Mathematical Society’s Award for Impact on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics.

DMS Colloquium: Woden Kusner

Nov 13, 2020 04:00 PM

Speaker: Wöden Kusner (University of Georgia)

Title: Measuring chirality with the wind (à la Lord Kelvin)

Abstract: The question of measuring "handedness" is of some significance in mathematics... and in the real world. Propellers and screws, proteins and DNA, in fact *almost everything* is chiral.  But we will defer to the chemists, who sometimes reduce this question to:

"Are your shoes more left-or-right handed than a potato?"

To address this question, we can begin with the hydrodynamic principle that chiral objects rotate when placed in a collimated flow. This leads to a trace-free tensorial chirality measure for space curves and surfaces, with a clear physical interpretation measuring twist. As a consequence, the "average handedness" of an object with respect to this measure will always be 0.  This also strongly suggests that a posited construction of Lord Kelvin--the isotropic helicoid--cannot exist.

This is joint work with Giovanni Dietler, Rob Kusner, Eric Rawdon, and Piotr Szymczak.

Faculty host:  Andras Bezdek

Please visit colloquium web page:

DMS Colloquium: Antony Pearson

Oct 09, 2020 04:00 PM

Speaker: Antony Pearson

Title: Extracting independence from unstructured joint probability distributions

Abstract: This talk describes a novel way to represent the probability distribution of a random binary string as a mixture having a maximally weighted mixture component associated with independent (though not necessarily identically distributed) Bernoulli characters. I refer to this as the latent independent weight of the probabilistic source producing the string. I will demonstrate that this quantity has a surprising connection to a well-known problem in computational geometry which is used to derive combinatorial algorithm to compute it. The decomposition proposed may serve as an alternative to the Boolean paradigm of hypothesis testing, or to assess the fraction of uncorrupted samples originating from a source with independent marginal distributions. In this sense, the latent independent weight quantifies the maximal amount of independence contained within a probabilistic source which, properly speaking, may not have independent marginal distributions.

Faculty host: Elvan Ceyhan

Elvan Ceyhan is inviting you to a scheduled Auburn University Zoom e-meeting. If you're a new participant, we have a quick start guide here: https://aub.ie/zoomquickstart

Topic: Math & Stat Colloquium

Time: Oct 9, 2020 04:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://auburn.zoom.us/j/89983923905

Connect using Computer/Device audio if possible.

Or Telephone: Meeting ID: 899 8392 3905

Dial: +1 312 626 6799 (US Toll)

or +1 646 876 9923 (US Toll)

Or an H.323/SIP room system:

H.323: 162.255.37.11 (US West) or 162.255.36.11 (US East)

Meeting ID: 899 8392 3905

Last Updated: 09/11/2015