AWB

 

It's the Week 4 Student Bulletin!

Congratulations on making it halfway through the term (and the academic year)!

Read on for "Is a Maths PhD Right for Me?", AI in Fridays@2, and a CDT in Cyber-Physical Risk.

Wed, 25 Feb 2026
16:00
L4

Serre weight conjectures and modularity lifting for GSp4

Heejong Lee
Abstract

Given a Galois representation attached to a regular algebraic cuspidal automorphic representation, the Hodge--Tate weight of the Galois representation is matched with the weight of the automorphic representation. Serre weight conjectures are mod p analogue of such a correspondence, relating ramification at p of a mod p Galois representation and Serre weights of mod p algebraic automorphic forms. In this talk, I will discuss how to understand Serre weight conjectures and modularity lifting as a relationship between representation theory of finite groups of Lie type (e.g. GSp4(Fp)) and the geometry of p-adic local Galois representations. Then I will explain the proof idea in the case of GSp4. This is based on a joint work with Daniel Le and Bao V. Le Hung.

Thu, 19 Feb 2026

15:00 - 17:30
VC1

Compactness tools related to PDEs governing compressible flows.

Professor Didier Bresch
(National Centre for Scientific Research)
Abstract
During this mini-course I will try to present some compactness tools that are encountered in the world of weak nonlinear PDE solutions governing compressible flows.


 

The Oxford SIAM Student Chapter are excited to announce their very first joint event with G-Research. Join them for an introductory talk about the company (a great talk to attend if you are keen on internships), followed by an interactive game with the chance to win £100 Amazon vouchers.

Mathematical Institute, C6,  Tuesday 17 February (W5), 3:30 pm. Tea, coffee (decaf available) and biscuits will be provided in the Common Room afterwards.

Thu, 12 Nov 2026

14:00 - 15:00
Lecture Room 3

State time geometry: causal performance profiles and optimal data transport in parallel execution

Dr Peter Braam
(Department of Physics, Oxford University)
Abstract

Dr Peter Braam is going to talk about; 'State time geometry: causal performance profiles and optimal data transport in parallel execution'

 

The increasing complexity of parallel architectures and heterogeneous microarchitectures makes predicting and optimising program performance notoriously difficult. For Optimal Data Transport, we present a discrete variant of the Wasserstein–Fisher–Rao metric that quantifies the true cost of data layout transformations and movement across memory hierarchies. For Causal Performance Profiles, we introduce the Lyons–Gregg Signature, which combines the ideas of Terry Lyons' rough path signatures with hardware performance counters (eBPF) to capture cross-correlated, causal bottlenecks in execution streams. Both arose from State Time Geometry (STG), a model for stateful program execution on computing infrastructure, first modelled as a dynamical system governing state-values over the space of memory addresses. The address space generalises to geometric objects defining infrastructure and leads to the metric. The state transitions of parallel executions become a Grothendieck quantum field theory over the infrastructure and carry the statistical model for the Lyons-Gregg Signature. The central theme is that an intuitive faithful model is not doomed by complexity but forms a geometric domain in which both theoretical and engineering perspectives are simplified.

(In a companion lecture in the Computing Laboratory at 11:00 on Nov 13, we will discuss STG's underlying categorical and geometric structure and its relationship to programming languages and formal methods)

Bio: Peter Braam is a scientist and technologist working on problems in systems software, large-scale scientific computing, and formal methods. Educated as a pure mathematician under Sir Michael Atiyah, he began his career in academia at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Cambridge. He later co-founded a startup that developed the Lustre file system, which remains the de facto standard in large-scale scientific computing more than 25 years after its introduction.  His current work focuses on declarative infrastructure software and geometric approaches to reasoning about the execution of computations. He is presently affiliated with Oxford’s Mathematical Institute and Department of Physics, and with Computer Science at Waseda University.
Proving the binomial theorem in Britain, 1750–1830
Hollings, C Wardhaugh, B British Journal for the History of Mathematics (04 Jun 2026) doi:10.1080/26375451.2026.2648415
Wed, 11 Feb 2026

16:00 - 17:00
L6

The Prime Decomposition Theorem for 3-Manifolds

Ojas Mittal
((Mathematical Institute University of Oxford))
Abstract

A 3-manifold is a space which locally looks like R^3. A major theme in 3-manifold Topology is to understand and classify 3-manifolds. Given two compact 3-manifolds M_1,M_2 we can form another 3-manifold by taking what’s called the “connect sum” of M_1 and M_2. Under this operation, 3-manifolds can be decomposed uniquely into prime pieces just like the integers can be decomposed uniquely as a product of primes. We will discuss this prime decomposition theorem for 3-manifolds while also giving a wide variety of examples.

The Self-Duality Equations on a Riemann Surface and Four-Dimensional Chern-Simons Theory
Bittleston, R Mason, L Moosavian, S (08 Jan 2026)
Tue, 10 Mar 2026
16:00

A FBSDE construction of the sine-Gordon EQFT

Sarah-Jean Meyer
Abstract

I will present a construction and characterization of the (massive) sine-Gordon EQFT up to 6π in the full space.  The construction relies on a systematic study of the renormalization flow equation and a forward backward stochastic differential equation (FBSDE) which give good control of the EQFT and allows to derive various additional properties.


This is based on joint work with Massimiliano Gubinelli.

Subscribe to