Quantum groups, which has been a major overarching theme across various branches of mathematics since late 20th century, appear in many ways. Deformation of compact Lie groups is a particularly fruitful paradigm that sits in the intersection between operator algebraic approach to quantized spaces on the one hand, and more algebraic one arising from study of quantum integrable systems on the other.
On the side of operator algebra, Woronowicz defined the C*-bialgebra representing quantized SU(2) based on his theory of pseudospaces. This gives a (noncommutative) C*-algebra of "continuous functions" on the quantized group SUq(2).
Its algebraic counterpart is the quantized universal enveloping algebra Uq(??2), due to Kulish–Reshetikhin and Sklyanin, coming from a search of algebraic structures on solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation. This is (an essentially unique) deformation of the universal enveloping algebra U(??2) as a Hopf algebra.
These structures are in certain duality, and have far-reaching generalization to compact simple Lie groups like SU(n). The interaction of ideas from both fields led to interesting results beyond original settings of these theories.
In this introductory talk, I will explain the basic quantization scheme underlying this "q-deformation", and basic properties of the associated C*-algebras. As part of more recent and advanced topics, I also want to explain an interesting relation to complex simple Lie groups through the idea of quantum double.

C*-algebras associated to etale groupoids appear as a versatile construction in many contexts. For instance, groupoid C*-algebras allow for implementation of natural one-parameter groups of automorphisms obtained from continuous cocycles. This provides a path to quantum statistical mechanical systems, where one studies equilibrium states and ground states. The early characterisations of ground states and equilibrium states for groupoid C*-algebras due to Renault have seen remarkable refinements. It is possible to characterise in great generality all ground states of etale groupoid C*-algebras in terms of a boundary groupoid of the cocycle (joint work with Laca and Neshveyev). The steps in the proof employ important constructions for groupoid C*-algebras due to Renault.

I will talk about the joint moments of characteristic polynomials of random unitary matrices and their derivatives. In joint work with Jon Keating and Jon Warren we establish the asymptotics of these quantities for general real values of the exponents as the size N of the matrix goes to infinity. This proves a conjecture of Hughes from 2001. In subsequent joint work with Benjamin Bedert, Mustafa Alper Gunes and Arun Soor we focus on the leading order coefficient in the asymptotics, we connect this to Painleve equations for general values of the exponents and obtain explicit expressions corresponding to the so-called classical solutions of these equations.

I will discuss an analogue of the CHY formalism in AdS. Considering the biadjoint scalar theory on AdS, I will explain how to rewrite all the tree-level amplitudes as an integral over the moduli space of punctured Riemann spheres. Contrary to the flat space, the scattering equations are operator-valued. The resulting formula is motivated via a bosonic ambitwistor string on AdS and can be proven to be equivalent to the corresponding Witten diagram computation by applying a series of contour deformations.