16:00
North Wing talk: Dr Thomas Karam
Title: Ranges control degree ranks of multivariate polynomials on finite prime fields.
Abstract: Let $p$ be a prime. It has been known since work of Green and Tao (2007) that if a polynomial $P:\mathbb{F}_p^n \mapsto \mathbb{F}_p$ with degree $2 \le d \le p-1$ is not approximately equidistributed, then it can be expressed as a function of a bounded number of polynomials each with degree at most $d-1$. Since then, this result has been refined in several directions. We will explain how this kind of statement may be used to deduce an analogue where both the assumption and the conclusion are strengthened: if for some $1 \le t < d$ the image $P(\mathbb{F}_p^n)$ does not contain the image of a non-constant one-variable polynomial with degree at most $t$, then we can obtain a decomposition of $P$ in terms of a bounded number of polynomials each with degree at most $\lfloor d/(t+1) \rfloor$. We will also discuss the case where we replace the image $P(\mathbb{F}_p^n)$ by for instance $P(\{0,1\}^n)$ in the assumption.
South Wing talk: Dr Hamid Rahkooy
Title: Toric Varieties in Biochemical Reaction Networks
Abstract: Toric varieties are interesting objects for algebraic geometers as they have many properties. On the other hand, toric varieties appear in many applications. In particular, dynamics of many biochemical reactions lead to toric varieties. In this talk we discuss how to test toricity algorithmically, using computational algebra methods, e.g., Gröbner bases and quantifier elimination. We show experiments on real world models of reaction networks and observe that many biochemical reactions have toric steady states. We discuss complexity bounds and how to improve computations in certain cases.