University of Georgia
Department of Mathematics

Seminar Schedule
November 14– November 18, 2005
All Seminars are held in Boyd Graduate Studies Bldg. unless otherwise noted.

MONDAY, November 14, 2005

Topology/Geometry
2:30pm, Room 303
Speaker: Ismar Volic, University of Virginia
Title of talk: Bott-Taubes integrals and knot invariants
Abstract: Inspired by the linking number, Bott and Taubes, following work of Bar-Natan, Kontsevich, and others, defined certain integrals over configuration spaces which produce closed zero-forms, i.e. knot invariants, on the space of classical knots. I will describe this construction, explain how it can be used for obtaining other cohomology classes of spaces of knots in higher dimensions, and mention its connection to Vassiliev invariants.

Time permitting; I will also indicate how Bott-Taubes integrals can be used to connect knot theory to Goodwillie-Weiss calculus of the embedding functor.

Algebra
2:30-3:30pm., Room 410
No meeting this week

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00pm, Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

TUESDAY, November 15, 2005

VIGRE-Graduate Student Seminar
2:00p.m., Room 303
Speaker: Ismar Volic, University of Virginia
Title of talk: Vassiliev invariants of knots
Abstract: Vassiliev (or finite type) knot invariants have received much attention in the last ten years because of the many connections they have to physics and 3-manifold theory. They are also conjectured to ^Óseparate^Ô knots, meaning that any two different knots can be distinguished by a Vassiliev invariant. After stating the relatively simple definition of Vassiliev invariants, I will describe how they are related to a certain algebra of chord diagrams. This relationship, given by a celebrated integral due to Kontsevich, allows us to study Vassiliev invariants in a purely combinatorial fashion. However, the appearance of such an integral in knot theory is still mysterious and not well understood.

Math Club Talk
5:30, Room 304 - Boyd Graduate Studies Bldg.
Speaker: Dr. Mary Lynn Reed (National Security Agency)
Title: Mathematics and Careers at NSA
Dr. Reed received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. She has had many different `mathematical' jobs over the last ten years. In addition to five years at NSA and two years at a research institute affiliated with NSA, she also worked in academia, the software industry, and at an actuarial consulting firm. As she is quick to point out, she is almost a mathematics career panel all by herself. And she says that without a doubt, NSA has the most exciting mathematics of all!

Pizza and refreshments served after the talk

WEDNESDAY, November 16, 2005

Algebraic Geometry
2:30-3:45pm, Room 410
No Meeting this week

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00pm, Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

Number Theory Seminar/Arithmetic Geometry
3:30pm, Room 304
Speaker: Daeshik Park, University of Georgia
Title of talk: “The Fekete-Szego Theorem with splitting conditions on the characteristic p projective line”

VIGRE-Algebra Group
3:45p.m., Room 302

THURSDAY, November 17, 2005

VIGRE – Feynman Diagrams
2:00pm, Room 326

VIGRE – Cardiac Physiology
2:00p.m., Room 640

VIGRE-Algebraic Geometry Group
3:30pm, Room 323

FRIDAY, November 18, 2005

Probability Theory
2:30-4:00pm, Room 303
Speaker: Lirong Yu, University of Georgia
Title of talk: A jump diffusion approach to modeling credit risk