Control theory is an important topic in applied mathematics that is used in a number of disciplines. Its theoretical foundations involve several areas of mathematics. It is also a topic that is less well known at the undergraduate level. In this talk we will explain what control theory is and give several elementary examples of specific kinds of…

Solid, liquid, gas – we see these phases of matter all around us. But physicists have discovered exotic phases with strange properties, such as superfluids and superconductors. What kinds of phase transitions happen in an extremely cold, thin sheet of matter? What does this have to do with the field of math known as topology? In this talk we’ll…

Basic physics suggests that when we stand up, the blood pressure in our brain should drop dramatically. Such a pressure drop should cause us to faint. But most of us don’t faint when we stand up. In this talk I’ll discuss a mathematical model that explains why most of us don’t, and why some people…

1. Ephraim Bililign Title: Measuring the temperature of granular systems Abstract: Granular systems, or collections of athermal mesoscale particles, are immune to temperature in the conventional sense. Thus, to describe the behavior of an jammed assortment of grains, we turn to a modified thermodynamics built on forces and volumes. I will discuss the experimental measurements…

1. Beverly Setzer Title: Detecting Hidden Nodes in Neuronal Networks using Adaptive Filtering Abstract: The identification of network connectivity from noisy time series is of great interest in the study of network dynamics. This connectivity estimation problem becomes more complicated when we consider the possibility of hidden nodes within the network. These hidden nodes act…

A generic rectangulation is a tiling of a rectangle by rectangles, with no four rectangles sharing a single corner (think: no Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah). For example: We want to ignore lengths of edges and just look at the different configurations of rectangles. In this way of thinking, the rectangulations and are the…

“When am I going to use this?”      It’s a question every student has asked at least once. The Modeling Contest in Mathematics (MCM), held annually by COMAP, provides a way for undergraduates to apply the knowledge gained from classes to real world problems. Each year, COMAP presents six interesting prompts on anything ranging…

Knot theory is the subarea of topology that studies math- ematical knots or different ways of placing a circle inside 3- dimensional space. Proving that two knots are distinct (or equivalent) is the main problem knot theorists deal with. In the talk, we will discuss methods used to distinguish knots. For a simple introduction click…