Congratulations on reaching the end of the academic year! Please join us for celebratory drinks and nibbles at The Alchemist (Westgate, Bonn Square, Oxford OX1 1TR) at 19:00-21:00 on Thursday 12th June to chat with our team about life at Optiver, our roles, and the opportunity to make an early application this summer.

 Feel free to bring a friend who could be interested in a role in trading, research, or software engineering.

The MSc in Mathematical Sciences (OMMS) is a standalone MSc which runs parallel with Part C and will be taking on its fourth cohort of students in the next academic year. To help the MSc students feel welcome in the department, we have set up a buddy system where an OMMS student will be paired with a current Part B student who's staying on to Part C, so they can communicate over the summer if they choose.

Chase-and-Run and Chirality in Nonlocal Models of Pattern Formation
Jewell, T Krause, A Maini, P Gaffney, E (22 May 2025)
Tue, 10 Jun 2025
14:00
C6

Nearly G2-structures and G2-Laplacian co-flows.

Jakob Stein
(UNICAMP )
Abstract

In this talk, we discuss nearly G2 structures, which define positive Einstein metrics, and are, up to scale, critical points of a geometric flow called (modified) Laplacian co-flow. We will discuss a recent joint work with Jason Lotay showing that many of these nearly G2 critical points are unstable for the flow. 

Mon, 09 Jun 2025
15:30
L5

Planar loops and the homology of Temperley-Lieb algebras

Guy Boyde
(Universiteit Utrecht)
Abstract

Temperley-Lieb algebras are certain finite-dimensional algebras coming originally from statistical physics and knot theory. Around 2019, they became one of the first examples of homological stability for algebras (homology is here taken to be certain Tor-groups), when Boyd and Hepworth showed that in low dimensions the homology vanishes. We're now able to give complete calculations of their homology, which has a surprisingly rich structure (and in particular is very far from vanishing). This is joint work in progress with Rachael Boyd, Oscar Randal-Williams, and Robin Sroka. Prerequisites will be minimal: it will be enough to know what Tor is.

Fri, 13 Jun 2025

11:00 - 12:00
Lecture Room 3

A Mathematical Perspective on Transformers

Prof Philippe Rigollet
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Abstract

Since their introduction in 2017, Transformers have revolutionized large language models and the broader field of deep learning. Central to this success is the ground-breaking self-attention mechanism. In this presentation, I’ll introduce a mathematical framework that casts this mechanism as a mean-field interacting particle system, revealing a desirable long-time clustering behaviour. This perspective leads to a trove of fascinating questions with unexpected connections to Kuramoto oscillators, sphere packing, Wasserstein gradient flows, and slow dynamics.

 

Bio: Philippe Rigollet is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at MIT, where he serves as Chair of the Applied Math Committee and Director of the Statistics and Data Science Center. His research spans multiple dimensions of mathematical data science, including statistics, machine learning, and optimization, with recent emphasis on optimal transport and its applications. See https://math.mit.edu/~rigollet/ for more information.

 

 

This talk is hosted by the AI Reading Group

 

 

 

Post-buckling of fiber-reinforced soft tissues
Goriely, A Liu, Y Liu, R Ma, W Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids
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