(above) a collaborative blackboard from INI's ground floor communal area.

INI NEWS BULLETIN
July 2019

Dear friends, associates and supporters of INI,

Welcome to the July 2019 edition of our monthly news bulletin. In this release you will find the following five stories:

1. BRAIN TEASERS: discover our school-holidays-friendly #SummerMathsPuzzles project, launching on Thursday 1 August.
2. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS: registrations are now open for two major introductory programme workshops.
3. PODCAST OF THE MONTH: listen to INI's "Tour de France Special", in which Director David Abrahams and Communications Manager Dan Aspel consider the mathematics of cycling and one particularly strange finish line photograph.
4. VIDEO ARCHIVE: recordings are now available of the opening "Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations" workshop's talks.
5. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: a guide to the coming month at INI.

Would you like to direct colleagues or associates to our newsletter sign-up page? Simply forward them this link: bit.ly/inisignup

Contact: communications@newton.ac.uk

(above) Organiser Professor Elizabeth Mansfield (Kent) speaking at the opening workshop of the "Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations" programme.

1. BRAIN TEASERS: discover our school-holidays-friendly #SummerMathsPuzzles project, launching on Thursday 1 August.

(above) Sierpiński triangle.

Throughout August, the Institute will be running a #SummerMathsPuzzles initiative on newton.ac.uk, which will be publicised across our social media channels.

This will take the form of a challenging and mathematically-themed brain teaser published on every weekday throughout the month. Although they will be non-trivial problems, solving them will require no mathematical training beyond school level... and they should also prove enormous fun! We hope that they will provide an excellent stimulus to adults and children alike throughout this holiday period.

We hope that you'll enjoy solving them with family, friends and colleagues and we ask that you share them either by forwarding this link: bit.ly/summermathspuzzles, or via our social media (see below) .

To take part, keep tabs open on INI's Facebook page, Twitter feed and Instagram account from Thursday 1 August.

2. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS: registrations are now open for two major introductory programme workshops.

Leading images from the "K-Theory, Algebraic Cycles and Motivic Homotopy Theory" (above) and "Groups, representations and applications: new perspectives" (below) programmes.

In January 2020 two major six-month programmes will be launching at INI: "K-Theory, Algebraic Cycles and Motivic Homotopy Theory" and "Groups, representations and applications: new perspectives" (see images above).

Within the first half of that month, both programmes will be hosting their opening workshops - and registration for participants is currently live in both cases. Please see below for summaries of each workshop and links to the registration pages. We would urge any interested parties to complete their applications as soon as possible.

> K-Theory, Algebraic Cycles and Motivic Homotopy Theory:
Introductory/instructional workshop

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 13 OCTOBER 2019

This workshop is intended to provide some orientation for the program: we aim to provide a leisurely overview of the key motivations and main themes of the workshop.  In particular, the workshop will feature a collection of lecture series aimed at graduate students and interested non-specialists.  We aim to have about 6 lecture series of approximately 3 lectures, with about 2 series in each of the main threads of the workshop, i.e., 2 lecture series on K-theory, motivic cohomology and motivic homotopy theory; 2 lecture series on Hodge theory and algebraic cycles, and 2 lecture series on mathematical physics and its connections with the preceding topics.   

> Groups, representations and applications: new perspectives:
Introductory Workshop

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 13 OCTOBER 2019

The workshop will provide participants with an overview of the workshop themes and how they fit together. This will be achieved by providing an account of the state of the art of each of the proposal themes, as well as an introduction to the major open problems in each area. We anticipate that this will be especially beneficial to Early Career Researchers and those wishing to work at the interface between group- and representation theory and other areas.

There will be in particular lectures on finite reductive groups, their subgroups and their representations, on local global conjectures in group representation theory, and on fusion systems. There will also be lectures on modern algorithmic methods for finitely presented groups and matrix groups. Connections with other areas of mathematics will also be presented.

3. PODCAST OF THE MONTH: listen to INI's "Tour de France Special", in which Director David Abrahams considers the mathematics of cycling and one particularly strange finish line photograph.

(above) Britain's David Millar crosses the finish line of the Tour de France 2012, Stage 12... but what has happened to his spokes...?

Recorded in the final days of last week's thrilling Tour de France 2019, INI Communications Manager Dan Aspel sits down with lifelong cycling fan (and INI Director) Professor David Abrahams to exchange various opinions on this year's race, a little about the mathematical beauty of cycling, and the fascinating quirks of photography and physics that led to one of the strangest finish line images you're ever likely to see... 

00:00 - Introduction 
02:58 – a love of the Tour de France 
05:20 – predictions for this year’s winner, general chat about the competition 
11:42 – the mathematics of cycling: friction, resistance, noise, fluid dynamics… fairings? 
17:24 – the mysterious image of David Millar, explained
24:10 – the “sensation” of cycling, "going beyond man’s capabilities"
26:35 – (un)informed guesses about what lies ahead

4. VIDEO ARCHIVE: recordings are now available of the opening "Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations" workshop's talks.

The opening "Tutorial workshop" for the 2019 programme "Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations" was held at INI from 8-12 July 2019.

Alongside a number of accompanying Survey lectures, talks within this workshop covered key themes of the six-month programme, including: Finite Element Exterior Calculus (Doug Arnold, Minnesota), Geometric Numerical Integrators (Chris Budd, Bath), Geometric PDE and Finite Element (Charle Elliot, Warwick).

The majority of these talks are now available to stream and download
via the link below.

5. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: looking forward to the month ahead at INI.

> Workshop: Next Generation Research and Modelling for Landscape Decisions 2 August 2019

> Programme: Bringing pure and applied analysis together via the Wiener-Hopf technique, its generalisations and applications 5-30 August 2019

> Workshop: Factorisation of matrix functions: New techniques and applications 12-16 August

See all forthcoming INI events here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/events/calendar

See all forthcoming INI seminars here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/events/seminars