Title: Working on your teaching statement: Why to start NOW, how to refine yours

Abstract: Lisa Townsley is a retired Academic Professional in UGA Mathematics. Prior to coming to UGA, she was a longtime professor at Benedictine University in Il. Over the years, she has helped many grad students refine their teaching statements and improve their job prospects. Come to the grad seminar to get ideas for your teaching statement, or to give it a professional makeover.

Nicholas Lindell has been selected as a 2019 Presidential Award of Excellence Scholar. 

Abstract: Ring of conditions is a version of intersection theory defined by De Concini and Procesi for spherical homogeneous spaces. In the case of an algebraic torus (C^*)^n, the ring of conditions has a convex geometric description as a ring generated by the volume polynomial on the space of polytopes. One can extend this description to the case of horospherical homogeneous spaces using an analogue of Bernstein-Kouchnirenko theorem for toric bundles. In my talk I will explain these results.

Abstract: The classical degree-genus formula computes the genus of a nonsingular algebraic curve in the complex projective plane. The well-known Thom conjecture posits that this is a lower bound on the genus of smoothly embedded, oriented and connected surface in CP2. The conjecture was first proved twenty-five years ago by Kronheimer and Mrowka, using Seiberg-Witten invariants. In this talk, we will describe a new proof of the conjecture that combines contact geometry with the novel theory of bridge trisections of knotted surfaces.