Other Past Events

The Data-driven approaches for physical models micro-workshop will take place on the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities campus on Monday, May 19th. This workshop will feature two speakers:

Aryan Deshwal

Adaptive Experimental Design to Accelerate Scientific Discovery and Engineering Design 
10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Aryan Deshwal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CS&E) at University of Minnesota. His research agenda is AI to Accelerate Scientific Discovery and Engineering Design where he focuses on advancing foundations of AI/ML to solve challenging real-world problems with high societal impact in collaboration with domain experts. He won the Outstanding Dissertation Award for his PhD and was selected for Rising Stars in AI by KAUST AI Initiative (2023).

Tobias Blickhan

Parametric model reduction of particle systems: discrete inverse continuity equation (DICE)
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Tobias Blickhan is a Faculty Fellow at the Courant Institute, New York University. He completed his PhD in mathematics at the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, working with Eric Sonnendrücker. His research focuses on reduced order modeling for parametrized partial differential equations and the application of generative modeling methods to physical systems.

Organizer

Li Wang

This event is sponsored by the National Science Foundation DMS-1846854.

This year, the 85th William Lowell Putnam competition will be held on Saturday, December 7, 2024 in Vincent Hall Room 16 on the East Bank Campus. This is a test of mathematical creativity in problem solving, and is directed to students of science and engineering, as well as mathematics.

Register here

The exam consists of two three-hour sessions (9am - noon, and 2pm - 5pm), punctuated by a two-hour lunch break. While taking the exam, each participant works independently, and participation also includes a pledge not to post or discuss the exam questions online or otherwise before 7 p.m. (“8 p.m. EST”, which is the end of the exam on the West Coast) that day. The questions posed in previous editions are posted (together with solutions) on the examination website, and the “Putnam Exam Archive” managed by Kiran Kedlaya (www.kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/) displays many more.

You are eligible to compete if you are an undergraduate student currently studying here (even as a visiting student), do not already hold a Bachelor's degree (or its equivalent or superior), and have not already participated in four of the previous competitions. 

Practice sessions will be held every week until the date of the exam, starting on October 8 from 4:15 - 5:50pm in Vincent Hall 215. 

To register for the exam and/or RSVP for the practice sessions please fill out this Google Form.

Full schedule of practice sessions:

All meetings will be held in 215 Vincent Hall.

• Tuesday, October 8th, 4:15 - 5:50 pm – Enjoy FREE PIZZA for our first practice session! 🍕
• Tuesday, October 15th, 4:15 - 5:50 pm
• Thursday, October 24th, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
• Thursday, October 31st, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
• Tuesday, November 5th, 4:15 - 5:50 pm
• Thursday, November 14th, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
• Tuesday, November 19th, 4:15 - 5:50 pm
• Monday, November 25th, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
• Thursday, December 5th,  4:30 - 6:00 pm

Overview

The relative Langlands program is a generalization of the classical Langlands program from reductive groups to certain homogeneous spaces. The recent work of Ben-Zvi, Sakellaridis, and Venkatesh on relative Langlands duality reveals new connections of the program to algebraic geometry and physics. The summer school and workshop will cover several aspects of the relative Langlands program and explore those new connections.

Full resolution group photo download

Summer school on Relative Langlands Duality, June 3-5, 2024

Summer school schedule & talk info

Invited Speakers

• David Ben-Zvi (Austin)
• Chen Wan (Rutgers)
• Lei Zhang (NUS)
• Yiannis Sakellaridis (JHU)
• Hiraku Nakajima (IPMU)

Workshop on classical, geometric and physics aspects of the Relative Langlands program, June 6-8, 2024

Workshop schedule & talk info

Invited Speakers

• Gurbir Dhillon (Yale)
• Ruotao Yang (Skoltech)
• Wang Xiao (Chicago)
• David Nadler (Berkeley)
• Zhilin Luo (Chicago)
• Spencer Leslie (Boston College)
• Hiraku Nakajima (IPMU)
• Charlotte Chan (Michigan)
• Chen Wan (Rutgers)
• Tony Feng (Berkeley)
• Zhiwei Yun (MIT)
• Xinwen Zhu (Stanford)

Organizers

• Tsao-Hsien Chen (UMN)
• Dihua Jiang (UMN)
• Kai-Wen Lan (UMN)
• David Nadler (Berkeley)
• Lingfei Yi (UMN)

Recordings

June 3rd

June 4th

June 5th

June 6th

June 7th

June 8th

Apply to attend

Organizers

• Kris Hollingsworth - Minnesota State University, Mankato
• Anurag Katyal - Palm Beach State College
• Melissa Lynn - St Olaf College
• Duane Nykamp - University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

In this five-day workshop, participants will learn how to create and implement online learning experiments using the Distributed Open Education Network (Doenet, doenet.org). Doenet is designed to help faculty critically evaluate how different content choices influence student learning in their classrooms. Doenet enables instructors to quickly test hypotheses regarding the relative effectiveness of alternative approaches by providing tools to assign different variations of an activity and analyze the resulting data.

Following brief introductions and demos of features of the Doenet platform, participants will work in small groups to develop learning experiments that can be used in the college classroom, assisted by the developers of Doenet. The expectation is that participants will leave the workshop with a learning experiment that they can use in their classroom the following year.

The workshop will run from 9 AM on Monday, May 20 through Noon on Friday, May 24. All organized activities will occur between 9 AM and 4 PM each day.

The workshop is open to faculty at all levels teaching STEM courses.

To apply, please submit the following documents through the Program Application link at the top of the page:

1. A personal statement briefly (200 words or less) stating what you hope to contribute to the discussion on learning experiments and what you hope to gain from this workshop. Include courses you teach for which you'd like to develop learning experiments. Priority will be given to those able to run learning experiments in their courses in the following year.
2. A brief CV or resume. (A list of publications is not necessary.)

Deadline for full consideration: April 17, 2024.

Event Overview

Recent Advances in Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations will be held from May 13 through May 17, 2024, at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. The conference provides much needed opportunities for participants to keep track of the significant developments in some of the most active research areas in PDEs. The talks are arranged at a leisurely pace over one week, to allow participants ample time to interact with experts in their area of interest. Panel discussions on career developments and experts-led sessions on open problems will further enhance the involvement of participants in the conference. Speakers will be asked for permission to record their talks that will be made publicly available for a wider accessibility. Special attention will be paid to advertise and recruit participants from underrepresented groups.

The analysis of fluid equations and Calculus of Variations (CVs) is undergoing very rapid and significant progress in recent years. The conference features a wide scope of active topics in both fluid equations and calculus of variations. Specifically, the scientific themes of the conference include (i) Computation and Computer Assisted Proofs in PDEs, (ii) Convex Integration Techniques and its Applications, (iii) Regularity theory of the Euler and Navier Stokes equations, (iv) Hydrodynamic stability in high Reynolds number regime, (v) Calculus of Variations from material sciences. Important breakthroughs have been achieved in recent years in all these closely related areas. CVs is a fertile source of ideas for many branches of PDEs including fluid equations. It is hoped that by bringing together experts from both areas a cross-fertilization is more likely to occur. 

Event Schedule

Speakers

• Kyungkeun Kang – Yonsei University
• Gregory Seregin – University of Oxford
• Alexander Kiselev – Duke University
• John Ball – Heriot-Watt University
• Thierry Gallay – Université Grenoble Alpes Institut Fourier
• Laszlo Szekelyhidi – Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences
• Camillo De Lellis – Institute for Advanced Study
• Richard James – University of Minnesota
• Javi Gomez-Serrano – Brown University
• Connor Mooney – University of California, Irvine
• Jacob Bedrossian – University of California, Los Angeles
• Anna Mazzucato – Pennsylvania State University
• Peter Constantin – Princeton University
• Peter Polacik –  University of Minnesota
• Julien Guillod – Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, Sorbonne Université
• Hyunju Kwon – ETH Zürich
• Irene Fonseca – Carnegie Mellon University
• Robert Kohn – New York University
• Svitlana Mayboroda – University of Minnesota
• Blair Davey – Montana State University

Lecture titles & abstracts

Organizers 

• Dallas Albritton – University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Tarek Elgindi – Duke University
• Hao Jia – University of Minnesota
• Tai-Peng Tsai – University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Vlad Vicol – New York University
• Xiaodong Yan – University of Connecticut

The conference is supported by NSF DMS-2346780: "Conference: Recent advances in nonlinear Partial Differential Equations." The event is also sponsored in part by the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications.

Event Overview

The aim of the conference is to bring together both experts and young scholars in three areas undergoing rapid progress: PDEs of fluid dynamics, computer assisted proofs and machine learning, to discuss the latest developments and facilitate discussion and collaboration.

Schedule Abstracts

Speakers

• Javi Serrano Gomez  – Brown University                    
• Ching-Yao Lai – Stanford University  
• Yongji Wang – Princeton University
• Jiajie Chen – New York University
• In-jee Jeong – Seoul National University
• Sanchit Chaturvedi – New York University
• Jia Shi – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Joonhyun La – Korea Institute for Advanced Study
• Tristan Leger – New York University
• Raj Beekie – Duke University
• Xinyu Zhao – McMaster University
• Sifan Wang – University of Pennsylvania
• Susanna Haziot – Brown University

Organizers

• Tristan Buckmaster
• Javier Serrano Gomez
• Alexandru Ionescu
• Hao Jia
• Ching-Yao Lai

Support

Supported by NSF DMS-2245228 "FRG: Collaborative Research: Singularities in incompressible flows: computer assisted proofs and physics-informed neural networks”

Willard Miller Jr. 

1937 – 2023

Willard Miller, Jr. was born September 17, 1937 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  As a child he discovered a collection of math books in his family's attic, and his exploration of them ignited an intense interest in mathematics.  This led Willard to undergraduate work in mathematics and physics at the University of Chicago, where the physicists tried to steer him away from math, while the mathematicians did the reverse.  This led him to graduate school in Berkeley, where he thought of doing both. He took a course on methods of applied mathematics under Bernard Friedman.  When he turned out to be the best student on the first exam, Friedman called him into his office and wanted him to be his student, not realizing that Willard was already his advisee.   The main themes of Willard's research began at that time; the title of his Ph.D. thesis was "On a Class of Vector-Valued Functions Covariant under the Classical Groups with Applications to Physics". A year after finishing his doctorate in 1963, Willard secured a postdoc position at the Courant Institute.  He was then offered a job at Minnesota and arrived in 1965.  He was soon promoted to associate professor, in 1967, and then to full professor in 1972.  In 1973, Willard spent a transformative sabbatical year in Montreal, where he came in close contact with many of his closest research collaborators and friends.

Regarding Willard's research accomplishments:  After Wigner, and then Vilenkin pioneered the remarkable connections between Lie group representation theory, special functions, and separation of variables, Willard soon became the most prominent researcher in the subject, and a mentor and role model for many younger researchers.  He was a prolific author, publishing well over 200 research papers and three influential texts on symmetry and separation of variables, as well as a later book, coauthored with Steve Damelin, on signal processing.  The vast majority of his papers were coauthored with Ernie Kalnins, who was in the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and, at times, included a wide range of senior and younger researchers.  Ernie was a frequent visitor to Minnesota while Willard often reciprocated by visiting Ernie in New Zealand.  The fact that his research output showed no sign of abating during all his years of administrative service is astonishing.  Indeed, his later discoveries in the field of superintegrable systems, both classical and quantum, provided compelling new insight into the Askey-Wilson scheme of orthogonal polynomials, and his 2012 paper on the subject, coauthored with Ernie and his former student Sarah Post, was awarded the Journal of Physics A Best Paper Prize.  In 2010, the School of Mathematics and the IMA organized the Conference on Symmetry, Separation, Super-integrability and Special Functions (S^4) in his honor and to celebrate his retirement.  The list of organizers and speakers constituted a "Who's Who" of the field of symmetry analysis and special function theory, and included many close friends, collaborators, and admirers.  Even following his retirement, his research output showed no sign of slowing down, and he was often seen hard at work in his office, at least until covid hit, and his illness prevented him from coming in to the department.

In addition to his research prowess, Willard has an exemplary and almost unparalleled record of service to the School of Mathematics and the University of Minnesota.  He was a man who was apparently unable to say no when asked to serve!  While chairing the search committee, he was convinced to serve as department head, and continued in that role for seven years (1978-1986).  During this period, the National Science Foundation (NSF) solicited proposals for a new, national mathematics research institute.  Willard along with Hans Weinberger, and George Sell spearheaded a Minnesota proposal, emphasizing applied mathematics.  After a long period, the NSF began to inform rejected applicants of their fate, but no direct news came to Minnesota until at last the NSF scheduled a site visit.  The Minnesota proposal was deemed to be so compelling that NSF decided to fund two institutes starting in 1982: a pure Institute (MSRI) at Berkeley, and the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) at Minnesota.  After some arm-twisting, Hans Weinberger agreed to serve as director, with George as deputy director.  Thanks to Willard, George, and Hans' vision, its broad range of annual programs and workshops, and the number of visitors, both young and old, the IMA had an indelible impact on applied mathematics, in the broadest possible sense.  After Hans stepped down in 1987 and was replaced by Avner Friedman, Willard became the deputy director, serving until 1994.  Later, from 1997 to 2001, he served as the full director of the IMA until Doug Arnold took over.  While head, Willard also played a key role fostering Harvey Keynes' founding of the highly successful University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Project (UMTYMP), that continues to this day to offer accelerated classes in mathematics to talented junior high and high school students.  Between his stints at the IMA, Willard served as associate dean (1994-1997) and, for a brief period (July-November, 1995), acting dean of the Institute of Technology (now the College of Science and Engineering).  In 2008, he briefly resumed his role as Acting Deputy Director of the IMA.  In 2005, in recognition of his many years of service and his research prominence, Willard was appointed College of Science and Engineering Distinguished Professor.

Sadly, Willard died on October 29, 2023.  He is survived by his wife Jane, son Stephen, daughter Andrea, and granddaughter Kalinda. His far-reaching impact on the School of Mathematics, the University of Minnesota, and the broader mathematical community continues unabated.

Willard Miller's archived website

April 9, 2024 Program 

Willard Miller and Separation of Variables -  the story of an exceptional research success  

Niky Kamran, McGill University 
2:30pm - 3:15pm  | 16 Vincent Hall 

Abstract: “I will describe some of Willard Miller’s outstanding and deeply influential contributions to the separation of variables theory for the Hamilton-Jacobi, Helmholtz and Dirac equations.”  

Tea in Common Room  

3:15pm | 120 Vincent Hall  

Remembering Willard Miller:  Beyond separation of variables, superintegrability  

Alexander V. Turbiner, Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 
3:45pm – 4:30pm | 16 Vincent Hall 

Abstract: “ I will focus on the heuristic value of Willard Miller’s numerous contributions to separation of variables and superintegrability, including classical and quantum n body problems.”  

Watch a recording of Kamran and Turbiner's talks here.

Memorial Program  

5:00pm – 7:00pm | Math Library, Vincent Hall 

Professor Peter Olver will share remarks about Willard and his career, followed by memories and stories from family and colleagues. Light refreshments will be available.

Watch a recording of the memorial program here.

View photos from the event here

This year, the 84th William Lowell Putnam competition will be held on Saturday, December 2, 2023 in Vincent Hall Room 16 on the East Bank Campus  This is a test of mathematical creativity in problem solving, and is directed to students of science and engineering, as well as mathematics.

The exam consists of two three-hour sessions (9am - noon, and 2pm - 5pm), punctuated by a two-hour lunch break. While taking the exam, each participant works independently, and participation also includes a pledge not to post or discuss the exam questions online or otherwise before 7 p.m. (“8 p.m. EST”, which is the end of the exam on the West Coast) that day.