Un of Tenn | Math Department

Seminars and Colloquiums
for the week of February 20, 2012

Speaker:

Dr. Emily Moran, NIMBioS postdoc, Monday
Mr. Jimmy Sunkes, Monday
Ms. Parisa Fatheddin, Monday
Prof. Mike Frazier, Tuesday
Prof. Jim Conant, Wednesday
Dr. Dave Auckly, Associate Director, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, UC Berkeley, Thursday
Dr. Andreas Malikopoulos - Weinberg Fellow at ORNL and NTRC, Friday

If you are interested in giving or arranging a talk for one of our seminars or colloquiums,
please review our calendar.

If you have questions, or a date you would like to confirm, please contact Dr. Judy Day.

Monday, February 20

MATH BIOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 2:30 - 3:20 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 121
SPEAKER: Emily Moran, NIMBioS postdoc
TITLE: More on sensitivity analysis of dynamic systems

ALGEBRA SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 - 4:25
ROOM: Ayres B004
SPEAKER: Mr. James Sunkes
TITLE: Ring-Theoretic Properties of Holomorphic Functions - 2
ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will discuss the ring-theoretic properties of complex differentiable functions. Namely, I will show that the collection of holomorophic functions on a nonempty, connected, open subset of the complex plane is an integral domain, a Bezout domain, and a Prufer domain. I will also show that this ring is not Noetherian, not a UFD, not a PID, and does not satisfy ACCP. The latter four conditions are equivalent for a Bezout domain, but I will provide specific examples to show why some of these properties fail. In order to prove some of the results, we will need theorems from a first and second year course in complex analysis. These results will be mentioned and discussed but not proven.

PROBABILITY SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 122
SPEAKER: Ms. Parisa Fatheddin
TITLE: Large Deviation Principle for Some Measure-Valued Processes, Part II
ABSTRACT: In much of the literature on Stochastic Partial Differential Equations (SPDE), the equations' terms are assumed to be Lipschitz continuous. In this talk a general SPDE in which the difusion term is non-Lipschitz is considered. As an application, the Large Deviation Principle is derived for Superbrownian motion and Fleming-Viot processes.

Tuesday, February 21

SIAM Student Chapter Talk and Pizza Lunch
TIME: 11:30 - 12:15
ROOM: Ayres 405
SPEAKER: Professor Mike Frazier
TITLE: Application of Wavelets: Fingerprints, Submarines, and Car Rattles

Wednesday, February 22

TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 2:30 - 3:20 pm
ROOM: Ayres G004
SPEAKER: Prof. Jim Conant
TITLE: An introduction to the Novikov conjecture - 3??
ABSTRACT: I will attempt to introduce all of the necessary topological ingredients to understand Novikov's conjecture in the way it was originally presented by him in a 1970 paper. I will be following the book by Matthias Kreck and Wolfgang Lück.

Thursday, February 23

JUNIOR COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:35 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 405
SPEAKER: Dave Auckly, Associate Director, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, UC Berkeley
TITLE: Exploring Scale - A Math Circle Demonstration
ABSTRACT: This will not be a presentation. Instead, it will be a group exploration of some interesting mathematics. We might learn something about hyperplanes, we might learn something about dynamics, we might learn ways in which algebra can be used to solve problems that appear to come from differential equations.

There will be pizza. We will build something. (Since pizza is part of the activity, pizza will be served at 3:35pm.)

Friday, February 24

COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 pm
ROOM: Ayres 405
SPEAKER: Dr. Andreas Malikopoulos - Weinberg Fellow at ORNL and NTRC
TITLE: Equillibrium Control Policies for Markov Chains
ABSTRACT: The average cost criterion has held great intuitive appeal and has attracted considerable attention. It is widely employed when controlling dynamic systems that evolve stochastically over time by means of formulating an optimization problem to achieve long-term goals efficiently. The average cost criterion is especially appealing when the decision-making process is long compared to other timescales involved, and there is no compelling motivation to select short-term optimization.

This talk will address the problem of controlling a Markov chain so as to minimize the average cost per unit time. Our approach treats the problem as a dual constrained optimization problem. We derive conditions guaranteeing that a saddle point exists for the new dual problem and we show that this saddle point is an equilibrium control policy for each state of the Markov chain. For practical situations with constraints consistent to those studied here, our results imply that recognition of such saddle points may be of value in deriving an optimal control policy in real time.

Refreshments will be available in Ayres 401 at 3:15 p.m.

Past notices:

winter break