The objective of the meeting is to bring theorists and theoretically-motivated experimentalists together to discuss promising theoretical frameworks for understanding cognitive processes and how these may be brought to bear on interpreting neural data or formulating new experiments. We hope that this meeting will be a chance to discuss future goals for theory in neuroscience: what are missing areas and emerging approaches that might help the field to make real progress in developing theories of brain function.

Microlocal analysis provides tools for the precise analysis of problems arising in areas such as partial differential equations or integral geometry by working in the phase space, i.e. the cotangent bundle, of the underlying manifold. It has origins in areas such as quantum mechanics and hyperbolic equations, in addition to the development of a general PDE theory, and has expanded tremendously over the last 40 years to the analysis of singular spaces, integral geometry, nonlinear equations, scattering theory… This workshop will provide a comprehensive introduction to the field for postdocs and graduate students as well as specialists outside the field, building up from standard facts about the Fourier transform, distributions and basic functional analysis.

This workshop will provide a gentle introduction to a selection of applications of microlocal analysis.  These may be drawn from among geometric microlocal analysis, inverse problems, scattering theory, hyperbolic dynamical systems,  quantum chaos and relativity.  The workshop will also provide  a panel discussion, a poster session and an introduction/research session. 

This workshop is open to all mathematicians.

Some holomorphic differentials on a genus 2 surface, with close up views of singular points, image courtesy Jian Jiang.

Holomorphic differentials on Riemann surfaces have long held a distinguished place in low dimensional geometry, dynamics and representation theory. Recently it has become apparent that they constitute a common feature of several other highly active areas of current research in mathematics and also at the interface with physics. In this introductory workshop, we will bring junior and senior researchers from this diverse range of subjects together in order to explore common themes and unexpected connections.

Some holomorphic differentials on a genus 2 surface, with close up views of singular points, image courtesy Jian Jiang.

This two-day workshop will consist of various talks given by prominent female mathematicians on topics of new developments in the role of holomorphic differentials on Riemann surfaces. These will be appropriate for graduate students, post-docs, and researchers in areas related to the program.  

This workshop is open to all mathematicians.

This simplicial fan in 3-dimensional space

Toric varieties are algebraic varieties defined by combinatorial data, and there is a wonderful interplay between algebra, combinatorics and geometry involved in their study. Many of the key concepts of abstract algebraic geometry (for example, constructing a variety by gluing affine pieces) have very concrete interpretations in the toric case, making toric varieties an ideal tool for introducing students to abstruse concepts.

The image of a large sphere isometrically embedded into a small space through a C^1 embedding. (Attributions: E. Bartzos, V. Borrelli, R. Denis, F. Lazarus, D. Rohmer, B. Thibert)

This two week summer school will introduce graduate students to the theory of h-principles.  After building up the theory from basic smooth topology, we will focus on more recent developments of the theory, particularly applications to symplectic and contact geometry, fluid dynamics, and foliation theory.

Popular visualization of the MNIST dataset

Learning theory is a rich field at the intersection of statistics, probability, computer science, and optimization. Over the last decades the statistical learning approach has been successfully applied to many problems of great interest, such as bioinformatics, computer vision, speech processing, robotics, and information retrieval. These impressive successes relied crucially on the mathematical foundation of statistical learning.

Recently, deep neural networks have demonstrated stunning empirical results across many applications like vision, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning. The field is now booming with new mathematical problems, and in particular, the challenge of providing theoretical foundations for deep learning techniques is still largely open. On the other hand, learning theory already has a rich history, with many beautiful connections to various areas of mathematics (e.g., probability theory, high dimensional geometry, game theory). The purpose of the summer school is to introduce graduate students (and advanced undergraduates) to these foundational results, as well as to expose them to the new and exciting modern challenges that arise in deep learning and reinforcement learning.

Fluid-flow stream function color-coded by vorticity in 3D flat torus calculated by K. Nakai (The University of Tokyo)

The purpose of the workshop is to introduce graduate students to fundamental results on the Navier-Stokes and the Euler equations, with special emphasis on the solvability of its initial value problem with rough initial data as well as the large time behavior of a solution. These topics have long research history. However, recent studies clarify the problems from a broad point of view, not only from analysis but also from detailed studies of orbit of the flow.

from distinct distances in the plane to line incidences in R^3

In the past eight years, a number of longstanding open problems in combinatorics were resolved using a new set of algebraic techniques. In this summer school, we will discuss these new techniques as well as some exciting recent developments.

A Holomorphic Curve

Symplectic topology is a fast developing branch of geometry that has seen phenomenal growth in the last twenty years. This two weeks long summer school, organized in the setting of the Séminaire de Mathématiques Supérieures, intends to survey some of the key directions of development in the subject today thus covering: advances in homological mirror symmetry; applications to hamiltonian dynamics; persistent homology phenomena; implications of flexibility and the dichotomy flexibility/rigidity; legendrian contact homology; embedded contact homology and four-dimensional holomorphic techniques and others. With the collaboration of many of the top researchers in the field today, the school intends to serve as an introduction and guideline to students and young researchers who are interested in accessing this diverse subject. 

Rips's δ-thin triangle condition for Gromov hyperbolicity of metric spaces (Stomatapoll)

Geometric group theory studies discrete groups by understanding the connections between algebraic properties of these groups and topological and geometric properties of the spaces on which they act. The aim of this summer school is to  introduce graduate students to specific central topics and recent developments in geometric group theory. The school will also include students presentations to give the participants an opportunity to practice their speaking skills in mathematics.  Finally, we hope that this meeting will help connect Latin American students with their American and Canadian counterparts in an environment that encourages discussion and collaboration. 

An illustration of an adaptation of Quillen's classical homological stability spectral sequence argument

This summer school will give an introduction to representation stability, the study of algebraic structural properties and stability phenomena exhibited by sequences of representations of finite or classical groups -- including sequences arising in connection to hyperplane arrangements, configuration spaces, mapping class groups, arithmetic groups, classical representation theory, Deligne categories, and twisted commutative algebras.  Representation stability incorporates tools from commutative algebra, category theory, representation theory, algebraic combinatorics, algebraic geometry, and algebraic topology. This workshop will assume minimal prerequisites, and students in varied disciplines are encouraged to apply. 

The MSRI-UP summer program is designed to serve a diverse group of undergraduate students who would like to conduct research in the mathematical sciences.

In 2019, MSRI-Up will focus on the application of combinatorial arguments and techniques to enumerate, examine, and investigate the existence of discrete mathematical structures with certain properties. The areas of interest for these applications encompass a wide range of mathematical fields and will include algebra, number theory, and graph theory, through weight multiplicity computations, the study of vector partition functions, and graph domination problems, respectively. The research program will be led by Dr. Pamela E. Harris, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Williams College.

The purpose of the MSRI's program, Summer Research for Women in Mathematics, is to provide space and funds to groups of women mathematicians to work on a research project at MSRI. Research projects can arise from work initiated at a Women's Conference, or can be freestanding activities.

The figure represents a blow-up. The so called blow-up algebras or Rees rings are the algebraic realizations of such blow-ups.

Linkage is a method for classifying ideals in local rings. Residual intersections is a generalization of linkage to the case where the two `linked' ideals  need not have the same codimension. Residual intersections are ubiquitous: they play an important role in the study of blowups, branch and multiple point loci, secant varieties, and Gauss images; they appear naturally in intersection theory; and they have close connections with integral closures of ideals. 

Commutative algebraists have long used the Frobenius or p-th power map to study commutative rings containing a finite field. The theory of tight closure and test ideals has widespread applications to the study of symbolic powers and to Briancon-Skoda type theorems for equi-characteristic rings.

Numerical conditions for the integral dependence of ideals and modules have a wealth of applications, not the least of which is in equisingularity theory. There is a long history of generalized criteria for integral dependence of ideals and modules based on variants of the Hilbert-Samuel and the Buchsbaum-Rim multiplicity that still require some remnants of finite length assumptions.

The Rees ring and the special fiber ring of an ideal arise in the process of blowing up a variety along a subvariety. Rees rings and special fiber rings also describe, respectively, the graphs and the images of rational maps between projective spaces. A difficult open problem in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, elimination theory, and geometric modeling is to determine explicitly the equations defining graphs and images of rational maps.

The school will consist of the following four courses with exercise sessions plus a Macaulay2 workshop

• Linkage and residual intersections
• Characteristic p methods and applications
• Blowup algebras
• Multiplicity theory

GOAL: To highlight careers and opportunities in the mathematical sciences, and to prepare women
and underrepresented minorities for work in academia, industry, and government laboratories.

The purpose of the workshop is to explain Vincent Lafforgue's ground breaking work, constructing the automorphic to Galois direction of the Langlands correspondence for function fields. There will also be a number of talks on more recent developments and related results.

This workshop will bring together researchers at various frontiers, including arithmetic geometry, representation theory, mathematical physics, and homotopy theory, where derived algebraic geometry has had recent impact. The aim will be to explain the ideas and tools behind recent progress and to advertise appealing questions. A focus will be on moduli spaces, for example of principal bundles with decorations as arise in many settings, and their natural structures.    

A picture of a singularity, courtesy of Herwig Hauser

The workshop will survey several areas of algebraic geometry, providing an introduction to the two main programs hosted by MSRI in Spring 2019. It will consist of 7 expository mini-courses and 7 separate lectures, each given by top experts in the field. 

Image created by Tristan Hübsch

This workshop will be on different aspects of Algebraic Geometry relating Derived Algebraic Geometry and Birational Geometry. In particular the workshop will focus on connections to other branches of mathematics and open problems. There will be some colloquium style lectures as well as shorter research talks. The workshop is open to all.

Courtesy of G. Karapet

Derived algebraic geometry is an extension of algebraic geometry that provides a convenient framework for directly treating non-generic geometric situations (such as non-transverse intersections in intersection theory), in lieu of the more traditional perturbative approaches (such as the “moving” lemma). This direct approach, in addition to being conceptually satisfying, has the distinct advantage of preserving the symmetries of the situation, which makes it much more applicable. In particular, in recent years, such techniques have found applications in diverse areas of mathematics, ranging from arithmetic geometry, mathematical physics, geometric representation theory, and homotopy theory. This semester long program will be dedicated to exploring these directions further, and finding new connections.

An invariant set inhibiting transport in a two degree-of-freedom Hamiltonian system (courtesy J. D. Szezech)

This is a main workshop of the program “Hamiltonian systems, from topology to applications through analysis.”  It  will feature current developments pertaining to finite and infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems, with a mix of rigorous theory and applications.  A broad range of topics will be included, e.g., existence of and transport about invariant sets (Arnold diffusion, KAM, etc.),  techniques for projection/reduction of infinite to finite systems, and the role of topological invariants in applications.

The NSF Mathematical Sciences Institutes Diversity Committee hosts the 2018 Blackwell-Tapia Conference and Awards Ceremony. This is the ninth conference since 2000, held every other year, with the location rotating among NSF Mathematics Institutes. The conference and prize honors David Blackwell, the first African-American member of the National Academy of Science, and Richard Tapia, winner of the National Medal of Science in 2010, two seminal figures who inspired a generation of African-American, Native American and Latino/Latina students to pursue careers in mathematics. The Blackwell-Tapia Prize recognizes a mathematician who has contributed significantly to research in his or her area of expertise, and who has served as a role model for mathematical scientists and students from underrepresented minority groups, or has contributed in other significant ways to addressing the problem of underrepresentation of minorities in math.

The 2018 recipient of the Blackwell-Tapia Prize is Dr. Ronald E. Mickens, the Distinguished Fuller E. Callaway Professor in the Department of Physics at Clark Atlanta University.

The conference will include scientific talks, poster presentations, panel discussions, ample opportunities for networking, and the awarding of the Blackwell-Tapia Prize. Participants are invited from all career stages and will represent institutions of all sizes across the country, including Puerto Rico.

The Mathematical Sciences Diversity Initiative holds a Modern Math Workshop (MMW) prior to the SACNAS National Conference each year. The 2018 MMW will be hosted by SAMSI at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, San Antonio, Texas on October 10th and 11th, 2018. This workshop is intended to encourage undergraduates, graduate students and recent PhDs from underrepresented minority groups to pursue careers in the mathematical sciences and build research and mentoring networks. The Modern Math Workshop is a pre-conference event at the SACNAS National Conference. The MMW includes a keynote lecture, mini-courses, research talks, a question and answer session and a reception.

Depiction of the standard nontwist map (courtesy of G.Miloshevich).

This is a main workshop of the program “Hamiltonian systems, from topology to applications through analysis” and is a companion to the workshop next month (November 26-30).  Both workshops will feature current developments pertaining to finite and infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems, with a mix of rigorous theory and applications.  A broad range of topics will be included, e.g., existence of and transport about invariant sets (Arnold diffusion, KAM, etc.),  techniques for projection/reduction of infinite to finite systems, and the role of topological invariants in applications.

Tangled honeycomb networks | and the Advanced Light Source at LBNL

The fascinating and complicated microstructures of materials that are now visible through advanced imaging techniques challenge the frontiers of characterisation and understanding. At the same time, developments in modern geometric and topological techniques are beginning to illuminate important features of material structures, while the microstructures themselves and the analysis and prediction of their macroscopic properties are inspiring new directions in pure and applied mathematics. In a collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), this workshop aims at intensifying the interaction of mathematicians with material scientists, physicists and chemists on the structural description and design of materials.