The Department of Mathematical Sciences enjoys an active Colloquium series. There are also departmental research seminars in Analysis and Discrete Mathematics. All our events are open to students and the public, and are free to attend.

Spring 2013

Colloquium

• Joint with PI Math Club: Edray Goins, Purdue W. L., on An Introduction to Dessins d'Enfants: The Intersection of Graph Theory, Group Theory, and Differential Geometry.  March 6.  
• John Erik Fornæss, University of Michigan Emeritus, Exposing Points.  Jan. 23.  
  
  Photo Page
  
  In complex analysis, the natural domains to study are the pseudoconvex ones. However, the easiest ones to do analysis on are the convex domains. So many results are obtained by looking for convexity. In this talk we will discuss exposing points on boundaries of pseudoconvex domains. This means convexifying the domains. This is recent joint work with Klas Diederich and Erlend F. Wold.

IPFW Featured Faculty

• Peter Dragnev, From Electrons to Orifices to Fullerenes: The Unfolding Story of Energy Optimization. Feb. 20.  Photo page 

• Prof. Dragnev, Characterizing stationary logarithmic points on the sphere, Jan. 30.
• PI Math Club/Pi Mu Epsilon student talks: At this annual event, IPFW students talk about their research or independent projects. Talks are at noon, April 24, and will continue until 1:30 (or sooner). The talks will be judged for cash prizes.  Photo page
• Graph Theory and Crystal Physics - Harry Francies
• Counting Euler Circuits - Cullen Hauser
• Golden Discoveries - Vreneli Brenneman
• Generalized Thompson Problem for 5 Points - Altun Shukurlu
• Creative Applications of Design of Experiments - Magali de Macedo
• Why Such a Big Deal About a Sample of 30 or More? - Peter Saya

Pi Mu Epsilon

• Prof. Coroian, The Transit of Venus and why it was one of the most important events in science history. Sunday, May 28. Photo page

Fall 2012

Colloquium

• Peter Hamburger, Western Kentucky University, and IPFW Professor Emeritus, An Alternative Proof of Bézout's Theorem. Nov. 20.
  
  In this talk an alternative proof of Bézout's Theorem will be given. Bézout's Theorem states that if gcd(a,b)=d is the greatest common divisor of two integers a and b, then there are integers s and t such that sa+tb=d. The integers s and t are called Bézout's coefficients.  This proof does not use the Euclidean Algorithm, or more precisely it does not use the Extended Euclidean Algorithm. The algorithm which is used in the proof gives both the greatest common divisor of two integers a and b and the Bézout's coefficients simultaneously. Then we modify the algorithm to simplify it. The modified algorithm contains one Division Algorithm, (the same as the first step of the Euclidean Algorithm), then defines an arithmetic progression that leads to the greatest common divisor and the first Bézout's coefficient at the same time; to find the second Bézout's coefficient an additional division is needed.
  
  The talk is suitable for students who are in MA 175/275 Discrete Mathematics.
  
  Joint work with George Petruska, Department of Computer Science, IPFW
• Photo page

• Second annual symposium: November 9.
• 9:00 Norm Levenberg, Indiana University Bloomington, Projective hulls and characterizations of meromorphic functions
• 10:00 Sergiy Borodachov, Towson University, Asymptotics for the discrete minimum Riesz energy problem
• 11:00 Yu Yan, Huntington University, A Hopf lemma for higher order differential inequalities and its applications
• 1:30 Yuan Zhang, IPFW, Sup-norm estimates for d-bar on infinite type convex domains in C²
• 3:30 Yifei Pan, IPFW, Finding flat solutions of the Cauchy-Riemann equation with flat data
• Printable Poster:  
• Schedule and Abstracts: 
• Photo page
• Sponsored by IPFW Office of Research, Engagement, and Sponsored Programs

Analysis Seminar

Spring 2012

Colloquium

• Maxim Yattselev, University of Oregon, Spurious poles in Padé approximation of algebraic functions, Feb. 27. 
• Yuan Zhang, University of California San Diego, Global extension and rigidity for local holomorphic isometric embeddings, Feb. 28. 
• Peter Hamburger, Western Kentucky University, Much Ado about Real Numbers, April 4.   (joint with PI Math Club)

IPFW Featured Faculty

• Yifei Pan, Solvability of Partial Differential Equations. Feb. 24.  Photo page

PI Math Club

• Student talks event:  April 11.
  • Calculus for Climatologists, Guchen (Alex) Liu
  • The Easiest Solution Isn't Always the Best Solution, Even in Math, Aldane Hoilett
• Billy Rhoades, Indiana University Bloomington Emeritus, Euler Was Right. Jan. 25.

Pi Mu Epsilon

• Yvonne Zubovic, Mathematics, Magic, and the Mysteries of Life.  April 15, 3 - 5 p.m.

Analysis Seminar

• Dave Redett, An introduction to weakly stationary processes.  March 12.
  
  • Abstract: I will begin by defining what it means for a stochastic process to be weakly stationary. We will then consider some examples. After identifying the spectral measure for a weakly stationary process, we will see how properties of this measure are reflected in the structure of the weakly stationary process.

Fall 2011

COAS Distinguished Lecturer

• Peter Dragnev, Electrons, Buckyballs, and Orifices: Nature's Way of Minimizing Energy.  Nov. 9.  Photo page

Analysis Mini-Symposium

• Program and Photos

Colloquium

• Yuan Zhang, UCSD, Chern-Moser-Weyl tensor theory and its applications to the Hopf Lemma for CR maps, Nov. 11.
  • In this talk, we give a monotonicity formula for the Chern-Moser-Weyl curvature tensor for CR embeddings between germs of Levi non-degenerate hypersurfaces of the same signature. The criterion allows us to construct many algebraic Levi non-degenerate hypersurfaces which are non-embeddable into hyperquadrics of the same signature. We also show that any CR map from a germ of a Levi non-degenerate hypersurface M in Cⁿ into a hyperquadric of the same signature in Cⁿ⁺¹, if does not send an open set of Cⁿ into the hyperquadric, is always CR transversal (equivalently, a CR embedding) at nonumbilical points. This is joint work with X. Huang.

PI Math Club

• J. Millspaw, IPFW Physics, Noisy Color Math, Oct. 19. 

Discrete Math Seminar

• Drew Lipman, University of Waterloo alumnus, An introduction to primal graphs, Nov. 14.
• M. Lipman, M. Walsh, and L. Hicks, Proper graph coloring. Sept. 26.

Analysis Seminar

• I. Kossovskiy, University of Western Ontario, Mappings of 2-nondegenerate hypersurfaces in dimension three, Nov. 11.
  • Let (M,p) and (M',p') be two real hypersurfaces with distinguished points in complex affine n-space and let H(M,p;M',p') be the space of local biholomorphic mappings of the ambient space preserving the hypersurfaces and the distinguished points. How "rich" can the space H(M,p;M',p') be? Poincaré (for n=2) and later Chern and Moser (for arbitrary n) in their famous papers gave the answer to this question for Levi non-degenerate hypersurfaces. Their results generated a big stream of further papers on CR-geometry and led to remarkable theorems in complex analysis. Using a new approach, we avoid the difficulties which occur in the Levi-degenerate case and reproduce the Poincaré-Chern-Moser theory for the case of 2-nondegenerate hypersurfaces in complex 3-space. This is joint work with Valery Beloshapka.
• Y. Pan, On solvability of nonlinear partial differential systems of any order in dimension two. Sept. 27.
  • In this talk, we present a general existence result (local and global) for a nonlinear partial differential system of any order in dimension two. In particular it implies the local existence of J-holomorphic curves on a almost complex manifold, due to Nijenhuis and Woolf, and also implies the existence of harmonic maps from the unit disk to any Riemannian manifold with prescribed tangent vector, which could be new. As a consequence of the method, we prove that any nonlinear partial differential system with a power m of the Laplace operator as principal part can be always solvable locally for any jet of order 2m-1 at the origin. At the same time, global solutions can be obtained, provided the system vanishes to first order at the origin. These results are almost best possible due to the classical theory of Ahlfors and Osserman.

Summer 2011

Colloquium

• David Benko, University of South Alabama, On a Remarkable Infinite Series. May 26.
  • The Riemann hypothesis concerns the zeros of the Riemann zeta function. In the talk we study another infinite series which we construct by modifying the Riemann zeta function. This function has a resemblance to the Riemann zeta function in respect to the location of its zeros: its zeros are located on a line. So we call this property the "mini Riemann hypothesis". The function behaves much more simply than the zeta function, so we can think of it as a starting point to get familiar with the zeta function itself.  

Spring 2011

 

Conference 

• MIGHTY LI graph theory conference at IPFW, April 15-16, 2011.

Analysis Seminar

• Adam Coffman, Counterexamples to strong unique continuation for a Beltrami system in C².

Pi Math Club

• Lunchtime presentation by Prof. Coroian, Brahe, Kepler, Newton and the Laws of Planetary Motion.  
• Student Talks event: 
  • Heip Nguyen, Roller Derby
  • Melissa Guse, Way Harder Than Fly Fishing: Comparing the means of two populations
  • Brad Moss, A New Approach for Comparing the Means of Two Populations
  • Garret Marshall, Generalized Estimating Equations and Quasi-Least Squares
• G. Venema, Calvin College,  Dimension Theory for Undergraduates. 
• D. Maloney, IPFW Physics, Deciding how to attack a problem.  

Pi Mu Epsilon

•  Alex James, IPFW alumnus, Educating a different kind of mathematician.  Installation ceremony Sunday, May 1, 3pm. 

Archive of Past Seminars, Colloquia, and Events (2009-2010)

Archive of Past Seminars, Colloquia, and Events (1997-2008)

Some other past events:

• Midwest Graph Theory conference, MIGHTY XLIII, 2006: link to photo page
• Midwest Graph Theory conference, MIGHTY XXXII, 1999
• Spring Meeting of the Indiana Section of the MAA, 2005
• Physics-Based Calculus: summer workshops 2001 - 2005