"A symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything."

Probably the most famous quote attributed to Gustav Mahler and when you listen to some of his works it feels like he is changing direction every few notes with the vicissitudes of life. But amid the turmoil he wrote some of the most beautiful romantic music you'll hear. Here Juanjo Mena conducts the BBC Philharmonic.

Full list of Songs of the Week

The ACM-W Chairs
Rendering History: The Women of ACM-W 91-136 (08 Apr 2024)

Big Green Lunch, Friday 13 June

Roast Cauliflower & Chickpea Korma (v) and Vegan Keema (ve). Served with pilau rice, vegetable samosa, garlic & coriander naan, and raita - all for only £5.95. Bring your own container and get 20p off your meal.

Image: Joachim Beuckelaer (possibly) - The Vegetable Seller

A homogenised model for dispersive transport and sorption in a heterogeneous porous medium
Auton, L Dalwadi, M Griffiths, I SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics

We are delighted to invite you to the Caribbean Oxford Initiative Showcase 2025, an exciting event celebrating the launch of the newly established Caribbean Oxford (CaribOx) Initiative.

Fri, 06 Jun 2025
13:00
L5

Topologically good cover from gradient descent

Uzu Lim
(Queen Mary University London)

Note: we would recommend to join the meeting using the Teams client for best user experience.

Abstract

The cover of a dataset is a fundamental concept in computational geometry and topology. In TDA (topological data analysis), it is especially used in computing persistent homology and data visualisation using Mapper. However only rudimentary methods have been used to compute a cover. In this talk, we formulate the cover computation problem as a general optimisation problem with a well-defined loss function, and use gradient descent to solve it. The resulting algorithm, ShapeDiscover, substantially improves quality of topological inference and data visualisation. We also show some preliminary applications in scRNA-seq transcriptomics and the topology of grid cells in the rats' brain. This is a joint work with Luis Scoccola and Heather Harrington.

Qdot, an Oxford spin-out based at Oxford Airport, are working towards the dream of clean, sustainable flight and they are recruiting a Numerical Methods Engineer to take a central role in developing numerical models and simulation tools to solve complex physical problems.

More info (LInkedIn)

Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth

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