Comprehensive Exam Presentation

Speaker: Chris Henry (Western)

" Identities of Lie algebras with actions"

Time: 14:00

Room: MC 107

Polynomial identity algebras (or PI-algebras) can be seen as generalizations of both commutative and finite dimensional algebras which maintain many ``nice'' properties. In this talk, we give a short introduction to Lie PI-algebras, focusing on the study of multilinear identities. Using these techniques, we demonstrate the existence of an identity for Lie algebras having certain actions on them; such actions arise naturally, for example, when the Lie algebra is graded by a finite group.

Homotopy Theory

Speaker: Jason Brennan (Western)

"POSTPONED: Impartial Game Theory in Coq"

Time: 13:30

Room: MC 107

I will provide a brief introduction to impartial game theory consisting of examples of games as well as elementary operations on them. This will be followed by a presentation of their syntactic counterparts in Coq, culminating in formal proofs of several basic theorems.

Geometry and Combinatorics

Speaker: Matthias Franz (Western)

"Non-equivariant cohomology of smooth toric varieties"

Time: 15:00

Room: MC 108

Having studied the equivariant cohomology of smooth toric varieties, we will see to what extent it determines the non-equivariant cohomology. In the equivariantly formal case, one gets the Jurkiewicz-Danilov theorem (with integer coefficients). In general, a complete answer is only known for rational coefficients.

Noncommutative Geometry

Speaker: Babak Beheshti (Western)

"Stationary phase approximation, Duistermaat-Heckman formula, and localization"

Time: 11:00

Room: MC 108

Colloquium

Speaker: Jon Borwein

"Continued Logarithms and Associated Continued Fractions"

Time: 13:30

Room: MC 108