In this presentation, I will discuss the construction and results of numerical simulations quantifying flows around several species of soft corals. In the first project, the flows near the tentacles of xeniid soft corals are quantified for the first time. Their active pulsations are thought to enhance their symbionts' photosynthetic rates by up to an order of magnitude. These polyps are approximately 1 cm in diameter and pulse at frequencies between approximately 0.5 and 1 Hz. As a result, the frequency-based Reynolds number calculated using the tentacle length and pulse frequency is on the order of 10 and rapidly decays as with distance from the polyp. This introduces the question of how these corals minimize the reversibility of the flow and bring in new volumes of fluid during each pulse. We estimate the Péclet number of the bulk flow generated by the coral as being on the order of 100–1000 whereas the flow between the bristles of the tentacles is on the order of 10. This illustrates the importance of advective transport in removing oxygen waste. In the second project, the flows through the elaborate branching structures of gorgonian colonies are considered.  As water moves through the elaborate branches, it is slowed, and recirculation zones can form downstream of the colony. At the smaller scale, individual polyps that emerge from the branches expand their tentacles, further slowing the flow. At the smallest scale, the tentacles are covered in tiny pinnules where exchange occurs. We quantified the gap to diameter ratios for various gorgonians at the scale of the branches, the polyp tentacles and the pinnules. We then used computational fluid dynamics to determine the flow patterns at all three levels of branching. We quantified the leakiness between the branches, tentacles and pinnules over the biologically relevant range of Reynolds numbers and gap-to-diameter ratios, and found that the branches and tentacles can act as either leaky rakes or solid plates depending upon these dimensionless parameters. The pinnules, in contrast, mostly impede the flow. Using an agent-based modeling framework, we quantified plankton capture as a function of the gap-to diameter ratio of the branches and the Reynolds number. We found that the capture rate depends critically on both morphology and Reynolds number. 

A pair of elliptic curves is said to be $N$-congruent if their mod $N$ Galois representations are isomorphic. We will discuss a construction of the moduli spaces of $N$-congruent elliptic curves, due to Kani--Schanz, and describe how this can be exploited to compute explicit equations. Finally we will outline a proof that there exist infinitely many pairs of elliptic curves with isomorphic mod $12$ Galois representations, building on previous work of Chen and Fisher (in the case where the underlying isomorphism of torsion subgroups respects the Weil pairing).

The Riemann hypothesis (RH) is one of the great open problems in
mathematics. It arose from the study of prime numbers in an analytic
context, and—as often occurs in mathematics—developed analogies in an
algebraic setting, leading to the influential Weil conjectures. RH for
curves over finite fields was proven in the 1940’s by Weil using
algebraic-geometric methods, and later reproven by Stepanov and
Bombieri by elementary means. In this talk, we use RH for curves to
prove the Weil bound for certain (Kloosterman) exponential sums, which
in turn is a fundamental tool in the study of prime numbers.

Isogeny-based cryptography is a candidate for post-quantum cryptography. The underlying hardness of isogeny-based protocols is the problem of computing endomorphism rings of supersingular elliptic curves, which is equivalent to the path-finding problem on the supersingular isogeny graph. Can path-finding be reduced to knowing just one endomorphism? An endomorphism gives an explicit orientation of a supersingular elliptic curve. In this talk, we use the volcano structure of the oriented supersingular isogeny graph to take ascending/descending/horizontal steps on the graph and deduce path-finding algorithms to an initial curve. This is joint work with Sarah Arpin, Kristin E. Lauter, Renate Scheidler, Katherine E. Stange and Ha T. N. Tran.