Understanding how living systems dynamically self-organise across spatial and temporal scales is a fundamental problem in biology; from the study of embryo development to regulation of cellular physiology. In this talk, I will discuss how we can use mathematical modelling to uncover the role of microscale physical interactions in cellular self-organisation. I will illustrate this by presenting two seemingly unrelated problems: environmental-driven compartmentalisation of the intracellular space; and self-organisation during collective migration of multicellular communities. Our results reveal hidden connections between these two processes hinting at the general role that chemical regulation of physical interactions plays in controlling self-organisation across scales in living matter

In this talk I will give a number of short vignettes of work that has been undertaken in my group over the last 15 years. Mathematically, the theme that underlies our work is the importance of randomness to biological systems. I will explore a number of systems for which randomness plays a critical role. Models of these systems which ignore this important feature do a poor job of replicating the known biology, which in turn limits their predictive power. The underlying biological theme of the majority our work is development, but the tools and techniques we have built can be applied to multiple biological systems and indeed further afield. Topics will be drawn from, locust migration, zebrafish pigment pattern formation, mammalian cell migratory defects, appropriate cell cycle modelling and more. I won't delve to deeply into anyone area, but am happy to take question or to expand upon of the areas I touch on.

Deep learning algorithms provide unprecedented opportunities to characterise complex structure in large data, but typically in a manner that cannot easily be interpreted beyond the 'black box'. We are developing methods to leverage the benefits of deep generative learning and computational modelling (e.g. fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, biochemistry), particularly in conjunction with biomedical imaging, to enable new insights into disease to be made. In this talk, I will describe our applications in several areas, including modelling drug delivery in cancer and retinal blood vessel loss in diabetes, and how this is leading us into the development of personalised digital twins.

This is  a notion we defined with Johan de Jong. If a finitely presented group  is the topological fundamental group of a smooth quasi-projective complex variety, then we prove that it is weakly integral. To this aim we use the Langlands program (both arithmetic to produce companions and geometric to use de Jong’s conjecture). On the other hand there are finitely presented groups which are not weakly integral (Breuillard). So this notion is an obstruction.
 

[This is the second in a series of two talks; the first talk will be in the Algebra Seminar of Tuesday Feb 4th https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/70022]

In 2005, Faltings initiated a p-adic analogue of the complex Simpson correspondence, a theory that has since been explored by various authors through different approaches. In this two-lecture series (part I in the Algebra Seminar and part II in the Arithmetic Geometry Seminar), I will present a joint work in progress with Michel Gros and Takeshi Tsuji, motivated by the goal of comparing the parallel approaches we have developed and establishing a robust framework to achieve broader functoriality results for the p-adic Simpson correspondence.

The approach I developed with M. Gros relies on the choice of a first-order deformation and involves a torsor of deformations along with its associated Higgs-Tate algebra, ultimately leading to Higgs bundles. In contrast, T. Tsuji's approach is intrinsic, relying on Higgs envelopes and producing Higgs crystals. The evaluations of a Higgs crystal on different deformations differ by a twist involving a line bundle on the spectral variety.  A similar and essentially equivalent twisting phenomenon occurs in the first approach when considering the functoriality of the p-adic Simpson correspondence by pullback by a morphism that may not lift to the chosen deformations.
We introduce a novel approach to twisting Higgs modules using Higgs-Tate algebras, similar to the first approach of the p-adic Simpson correspondence. In fact, the latter can itself be reformulated as a twist. Our theory provides new twisted higher direct images of Higgs modules, that we apply to study the functoriality of the p-adic Simpson correspondence by higher direct images with respect to a proper morphism that may not lift to the chosen deformations. Along the way, we clarify the relation between our twisting and another twisting construction using line bundles on the spectral variety that appeared recently in other works.

A monoid S is said to be weakly right coherent if every finitely generated right ideal of S is finitely presented as a right S-act. It is known that S is weakly right coherent if and only if it satisfies the following conditions: S is right ideal Howson, meaning that the intersection of any two finitely generated right ideals of S is finitely generated; and the right annihilator congruences r(a)={(u,v) in S x S | au=av} for each a in S are finitely generated as right congruences.

This talk will introduce basic semigroup theoretic concepts as is necessary before briefly surveying some important coherency-related results. Closure properties of the classes of monoids satisfying each of the above properties will be shared, with details explored for a specific construction. Time permitting, connections with axiomatisation will be discussed.

This talk will in part be based on a paper written with coauthors Craig Miller and Victoria Gould, preprint available at: arXiv:2411.03947.

Two-dimensional chiral conformal field theories (CFTs) admit three distinct mathematical formulations: vertex operator algebras (VOAs), conformal nets, and Segal (functorial) chiral CFTs. With the broader aim to build fully extended Segal chiral CFTs, we start with the input of a conformal net. 

In this talk, we focus on presenting three equivalent constructions of the category of solitons, i.e. the category of solitonic representations of the net, which we propose is what theory (chiral CFT) assigns to a point. Solitonic representations of the net are one of the primary class of examples of bicommutant categories (a categorified analogue of a von Neumann algebras). The Drinfel’d centre of solitonic representations is the representation category of the conformal net which has been studied before, particularly in the context of rational CFTs (finite-index nets). If time permits, we will briefly outline ongoing work on bicommutant category modules (which are the structures assigned by the Segal Chiral CFT at the level of 1-manifolds), hinting towards a categorified analogue of Connes fusion of von Neumann algebra modules.

(Bicommutant categories act on W*-categories analogous to von Neumann algebras acting on Hilbert spaces)

In subfactor theory, it has been observed that operator algebras often admit symmetries beyond mere groups, sometimes called quantum symmetries. Besides recent substantial progress on the classification programs of simple amenable C*-algebras and group actions on them, there has been increasing interest in their quantum symmetries. This talk is devoted to an attempt to ensure the existence of various quantum symmetries on simple amenable C*-algebras, at least in the purely infinite case, by providing a systematic way to produce them. As a technical ingredient, a simplicity criterion for certain Pimsner algebras is given.