(above) Fields medalist - and guest speaker at this year's INI-ICMS Correspondents Day - Professor Caucher Birkar (Cambridge).

INI NEWS BULLETIN
January 2020

Dear friends, associates and supporters of INI,

Welcome to the January 2020 edition of our monthly news bulletin. In this release you will find the following seven stories:

1. INI-ICMS CORRESPONDENTS DAY: a thank-you to all of those involved in this year's meeting of the Correspondents Network.
2. INI FUNDING BOOST ANNOUNCED: the UK government has announced a £300m funding boost for the mathematical sciences, with a portion allocated directly to INI.
3. "ELLIPTIC CURVES ASSOCIATED TO TWO-LOOP GRAPHS": watch Professor Spencer Bloch (Chicago)'s stimulating Rothschild Fellowship keynote lecture from 29 January.
4. WATCH RECORDINGS FROM THREE JANUARY WORKSHOPS: January has been a busy month in Seminar Room 1, with a slew of talks now uploaded and ready to view online.
5. "ADVENT BLACKBOARDS" STATISTICS: A look back at the success of December's popular online initiative.
6. GREEN TEAM NEWS: The latest updates on INI's efforts to promote sustainable practice and to embrace environmentally sound values.
7. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: looking forward to the month ahead at INI.

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(above) Participants - of varying ages - in this month's introductory workshop to the "K-theory, algebraic cycles and motivic homotopy theory" programme.

1. INI-ICMS CORRESPONDENTS DAY: a thank-you to all of those involved in this year's meeting of the Correspondents Network.

(above) INI Programme Organisers Rob de Jeu (left), John Greenlees (second from left) and Colva Roney-Dougal (right) join INI-ICMS Chair of Correspondents Niall MacKay (centre) and ICMS Centre Manager Jane Walker (second from right) in a panel discussion at this year's Correspondents Day.

On Wednesday 22 January INI hosted the annual INI-ICMS Correspondents Day meeting. With attending Correspondents from institutions spanning the UK (from Plymouth to Aberdeen and from Swansea to York) and from other groups and institutions (including the OR Society, Schlumberger and the Science and Technology Facilities Council) this was a significant meeting of mathematical bodies from across the country.

The Institute was proud to host Fields Medalist Professor Caucher Birkar (Cambridge) for his well-received talk "Algebraic geometry and some applications", and would also like to thank the panel of Programme Organisers (see above) for their time and input into the discussions held throughout the day.

There were many positive outcomes from the meeting, including valuable feedback as to how INI and ICMS can best present their facilities and opportunities to the mathematical community as a whole. We would like to thank everyone that attended for their thoughts and efforts.

2. INI FUNDING BOOST ANNOUNCED: the UK government has announced a £300m funding boost for the mathematical sciences, with a portion allocated directly to INI.

On Monday 27 January the UK government announced an increase in funding for the mathematical sciences of "up to £300m". The Isaac Newton Institute is specifically mentioned within the wording of the release as part of a trio of groups splitting a £7m fund aimed at increasing participant numbers and workshop frequency. The funds will be delivered by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), through which INI receives much of its funding.

The full statement can be found via the link below.

> https://epsrc.ukri.org/newsevents/news/major-funding-boost-for-mathematical-sciences/

3. "ELLIPTIC CURVES ASSOCIATED TO TWO-LOOP GRAPHS": watch Professor Spencer Bloch (Chicago)'s stimulating Rothschild Fellowship keynote lecture from 29 January.

Professor Spencer Bloch's keynote talk "Elliptic curves associated to two-loop graphs (Feynman diagrams)", delivered as part of his role as Rothschild Fellow for the "K-theory, algebraic cycles and motivic homotopy theory" programme, is now available to view online.

Please click the green button below to access the recording and further details of this stimulating lecture.
 

Two loop Feynman diagrams give rise to interesting cubic hypersurfaces in n variables, where n is the number of edges. When n=3, the cubic is obviously an elliptic curve. (In fact, a family of elliptic curves parametrized by physical parameters like momentum and masses.) Remarkably, elliptic curves appear also for suitable graphs with n=5 and n=7, and conjecturally for an infinite sequence of graphs with n odd. I will describe the algebraic geometry involved in proving this. Physically, the amplitudes associated to one-loop graphs are known to be dilogarithms. Time permitting, I will speculate a bit about how the presence of elliptic curves might point toward relations between two-loop amplitudes and elliptic dilogarithms. This is joint work with C. Doran, P. Vanhove, and M. Kerr.   

4. WATCH RECORDINGS FROM THREE JANUARY WORKSHOPS: January has been a busy month in Seminar Room 1, with a slew of talks now uploaded and ready to view online.

The past month has seen three programme workshops held at INI. Please click the hyperlinked titles below to see the full schedules for each, with recording links next to the talks that are currently available to watch online:

> "Introductory workshop to Groups, representations and applications: new perspectives"
> "Introductory workshop to K-theory, algebraic cycles and motivic homotopy theory"
> "Computational and algorithmic methods"

5. "ADVENT BLACKBOARDS" STATISTICS: A look back at the success of December's popular online initiative.

Throughout December 2019 the Institute's communications team took on an "Advent Blackboards" challenge, posting a new equation, theorem, conjecture or law on its social media channels until Christmas Day. We were thrilled by the audience response to this initiative (particularly given how "involving" the production of many of the blackboards involved could be - see above).

The statistics prove just how successful the campaign was, with over 100,000 Twitter impressions, 200 re-tweets, 608 "likes", a Facebook reach of over 38,000 users and more than 200 unique visits to the webpage set up to permanently host the blackboard images after the event. A warm thanks to all those who took part in commenting on and sharing these posts, with extra thanks to those who suggested ideas for blackboards.

6. GREEN TEAM NEWS: The latest updates on INI's efforts to promote sustainable practice and to embrace environmentally sound values.

In 2018 INI was accredited the University of Cambridge's Bronze Green Impact Award for taking measurable steps to reduce its environmental footprint related to water, waste, travel, energy, food, and other areas. This was followed in 2019 by the Silver award. The "Green Team", consisting of INI and Newton Gateway staff members, is now putting its efforts into trying to achieve that Gold award this year. In this regular section of our news bulletins we will update you with their most recent activities.

- A book exchange scheme has been set up amongst the Participant offices, just below the mezzanine area. Titles here are free to take for Institute visitors, on the understanding that each user donates as much as they withdraw.

- The INI and Newton Gateway staff are now holding biannual "bring and share lunch" events, in which locally sourced, home-cooked, healthy food is brought to a communal table and enjoyed together during a break period. The results so far have been delicious, encouraging and inspiring in equal measure.

- A bird feeding station has been set up in the courtyard adjacent to the rear of the INI building. This has so far proven extremely popular with the local birdlife (including numerous robins and blue tits), was purchased for very little cost and is regularly maintained by the generous volunteer work of the staff. Discussions are currently underway as to the best way to develop the surrounding courtyard area to best benefit the local wildlife and environment.

- Staff have been asked to consider Ecosia as an alternative search engine for use on their work computers. Run on Microsoft's "Bing" engine, the Berlin-based company uses all of its profits to fund reforestation projects around the world - with 82.5 million trees planted so far.

- A comprehensive travel audit of the Institute and its activities is in planning stages, through which INI and the Newton Gateway aim to reduce the travel impact of the many visitors that attend both centres throughout the year.

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

> Newton Gateway Workshop: Innovative Mathematics for the Modern Industrial Strategy 3 February 2020 to 14 February 2020

As a reminder: the selection of non-workshop-based seminars undertaken as part of the current programmes can be found - and in most cases live streamed or viewed after the event - via the seminars link below.

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