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Millican lectures are made possible through the generosity of Mr. Olin Moore Millican (1904-1999) who established the Roy McLeod Millican memorial Fund in honor of his brother.

The talks typically take place on Mondays, 4:00-5:00 pm, in GAB 461. The talks are intended for a general audience and everyone is encouraged to attend (including undergraduates). Refreshments are served 30 minutes before the talk in the same room as the talk.

For more information, contact Lea Beneish.

Upcoming Events 

  • 2025-3-3, 4:00pm, GAB 461: Farbod Shokrieh (University of Washington)

Graphs in algebraic and arithmetic geometry

Graphs can be viewed as (non-archimedean) analogs of Riemann surfaces. For example, there is a notion of Jacobians for graphs. More classically, graphs can be viewed as electrical networks. I will explain the interplay between these points of view and some recent applications in arithmetic geometry.
  • 2025-3-17, 4:00pm, GAB 461: Sheng Xu (Southern Methodist University)
The immersed interface method for flows around moving rigid objects
 
The immersed interface method (IIM) is a framework to solve differential equations with discontinuous solutions across interfaces. In this talk, I will first give a short tutorial about the IIM. I will then present some developments of the IIM for simulating flows around moving rigid objects. in the IIM, a rigid object is modeled as the fluid in the rigid motion enforced by singular force along the interface and body force inside the interface; the singular force and the body force induce jump conditions across the interface; and the necessary jump conditions are incorporated into discretization schemes on a fixed grid. I will describe how to compute and implement the jump conditions when an object is represented by a triangular mesh and demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency and robustness of the IIM using test results.
  • 2025-3-31, 4:00pm, GAB 461: Yuan Liu (Wichita State University)
  • 2025-4-7, 4:00pm, GAB 461: Weihua Geng (Southern Methodist University)

Past Events from Spring 2025

    • 2025-2-17, 4:00pm, GAB 461: Marianna Csörnyei (University of Chicago)

    Embeddings into Euclidean spaces without shrinking.

    We study the problem of which spaces $(X,\rho)$ can be embedded into ${\mathbb R}^d$ without decreasing any of the distances in $X$. That is, we ask the question whether there is an $f:\,X\to{\mathbb R}^d$ such that $\|x-y\|\ge\rho(x,y)$ for every $x,y\in X$. Our aim is to find necessary and sufficient conditions under which such a mapping exists, and to show how this can be used to generalize/disprove some classical results in real analysis.

  • 2025-1-13, 4:00 pm, GAB 461: Valentin Ovsienko (University of Champagne-Ardennes)

    Quantum numbers? Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!

    The ideas of quantum physics have had a huge impact on the development of mathematics, influencing all its fields. Many notions have emerged, such as quantum groups and algebras, quantum calculus, and many special functions. Numbers, the most elementary and ancient concept at the heart of mathematics since the Babylonians, should also have their place in the quantum landscape. This talk is an elementary and accessible overview of the emerging theory of quantum numbers, or “q-numbers”, including motivations, first results, and connections to other parts of mathematics. By the end, the mask will be thrown off, the truth will prevail, and the audience will learn how the “q” of Euler and Gauss turned from “quotient” into “quantum”, and now back into quotient!

    Slides are available here.

Recent Events

Date Speaker Title
2025-1-13 Valentin Ovsienko, University of Champagne-Ardennes Quantum numbers? Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!
2024-11-18 Martin Raum, Chalmers University of Technology From Black Hole Mergers to Paramodular Forms
2024-11-11 Larry Rolen, Vanderbilt University L-functions for Harmonic Maass Forms
2024-11-4 Jiahui Chen, University of Arkansas Integrating differential operators and deep learning in biology application
2024-10-14 Ken Ribet, University of California Berkeley Why Fibonacci's Book of squares makes us dream of cubic curves
2024-10-7 Padi Fuster Aguilera, University of Colorado Boulder Modelling the world through an analyst lens
2024-9-23

Maurice Rojas, Texas A&M University

Prime Powers and Locating Roots of Equations
2024-9-16 Henri Darmon, McGill University Unique factorization domains, elliptic curves, and modular forms
2024-4-22 Sue Sierra, University of Edinburgh Enveloping algebras of infinite-dimensional Lie algebras
2024-4-15 Dinakar Ramakrishnan, Caltech An invitation to Diophantine equations, congruence numbers and beyond
2024-4-10 Hannah Larson, UC Berkeley Moduli spaces of curves
2024-3-18 Sohail Farhangi, Adam Mickiewicz University Uniform pointwise ergodic theorems via ultraproducts
2024-3-4 Xinfeng Liu, University of South Carolina Data-driven mathematical modeling, computation and experimental investigation of dynamical heterogeneity in breast cancer
2023-11-13 Shuang Liu, UNT Computational moving boundary problems
2023-10-23 Wesley Perkins, Lyon College Modulational and subharmonic dynamics of periodic waves
2023-10-9 Natasha Sharma, UT El Paso Unconditional energy stability and solvability for a co-interior penalty method for a sixth-order Cahn-Hilliard type equation modeling microemulsions
2023-9-18 Tamara Kucherenko, CUNY Ergodic theory on coded shifts
2023-9-6 Paco Villaroya, Santa Clara University A characterization of compactness for singular integral operators