Princeton University Mathematics Department Junior Faculty Seminar, 2009-2010

This is an informal seminar organized by junior faculty and postdocs in the Princeton mathematics department. The theme is "Why you should care about ..." (or, "Why should you care about...?"). Talks will be general-audience accessible, and will give introductions to an interesting problem or area of mathematics. Senior faculty are not excluded, but the intended audience of the seminar is postdocs, junior faculty, and graduate students.

The seminar meets on Tuesdays at noon in Fine 601. The format is brown-bag lunch, and talks start at 12:15 to allow time to eat. If possible, the seminar organizers provide cookies.

For questions about the seminar, contact Joro Todorova: gtodorova 'at' math...
Schedule of Speakers
September 29, 2009 Susan Sierra: Why should you care about noncommutative rings?
October 6, 2009 Sergey Norin: Why should you care about graph theory?
Abstract: The Four Color problem has long been a poster child for graph theory and has inspired much of its development over the years. I will mention a few, perhaps surprising, equivalent formulations of the problem, outline the main ideas of its proof and discuss some of the related open questions.
October 13, 2009 Joro Todorov: Why should you care about the minimal model program?
October 20, 2009 Mike Hochman: Ergodic theory: What in the world is it?
Abstract: Ergodic theory is the study of measures invariant under a group action, and the asymptotics of points under the action. I will explain how this field got started (hint: Hamiltonian mechanics) and where it's gone from there, particularly some applications that I am fond of in metric number theory and Diophantine approximation.
October 27, 2009 Not meeting
November 3, 2009Fall Break
November 10, 2009Rupert Frank: Why should you care about Sobolev inequalities?
Abstract: Sobolev inequalities estimate integral norms of functions by integral norms of their derivatives. In the talk, I will discuss some applications of these inequalities and how their rich geometric structure can be used to obtain optimal constants. I will also explain their connection with the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.
November 17, 2009
November 24, 2009Victor Lie: TBA
December 1, 2009
December 7, 2009
December 14, 2009

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