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(above) Autumn colours outside INI's main entrance, 25/10/21.
INI NEWS BULLETIN
October 2021
Dear friends, associates and supporters of INI,
Welcome to the October 2021 edition of our monthly news bulletin. We hope it finds you well during this turning of the seasons.
This month, we're proud to welcome a new Director to the Institute, and to say farewell to an outgoing one. We're also delighted to share a trilogy of three-minute interviews with previous INI programme organisers and programme participants. We hope that they prove inspiring. And, finally, we have details to share on forthcoming keynote seminars from our current programmes' Kirk and Rothschild fellows.
Our "news in brief" this month is that...
- The 2021 Black Heroes of Mathematics Conference (5-6 October), which INI was proud to support, found great success: with over 700 total registrations, and each session attracting a minimum of 100 attendees.
- This month's CAR programme Rothschild keynote lecture ("Cluster algebras and representation theory", Prof Bernhard Keller) is available to view online here.
- Likewise, this month's MDL programme Kirk keynote lecture ("Machine-Learning Enabled Imaging: From Microscopy to Medical Imaging to Astronomy", Prof Rebecca Willett) is available to view online here.
- The INI / ICMS / KTN Virtual Forum for Knowledge Exchange in Mathematical Sciences (VKEMS) initiative has been named as a finalist in the annual PraxisAuril KE Awards. The winners in each category will be announced on 18 November.
- Three programme workshops will take place at INI throughout November. See their full listings and accompanying details here.
As always, you can follow us on Twitter (as well as Instagram and Facebook) for regular updates of our activities throughout the month.
Thanks as always for your continued support.
- INI Communications team
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) Professor Bernhard Keller, Rothschild Fellow of the CAR programme.
(above) One of INI's break-out area blackboards, 17/10/2021
Directorship: INI welcomes Prof Ulrike Tillmann, and bids farewell to Prof David Abrahams.
(above) Professors David Abrahams and Ulrike Tillmann.
On Friday 1 October 2021 Professor Ulrike Tillmann was appointed Director of INI, taking over the five-year post from previous incumbent Professor David Abrahams. You can read more about Ulrike’s background and research interests in our earlier news piece here.
In the article linked below, we present a short audio interview with Ulrike one week into her tenure. In it we find out a little more about her background and love of mathematics, her feelings upon returning to INI not as a participant but as a staff member, and what the future could hold for INI under her stewardship.
VIDEO: "INI participant profiles", three interviews with regular Isaac Newton Institute visitors.
(above) Professor Anotida Madzvamuse.
(below) Professor Reidun Twarock.
(above) Professor Wendelin Werner.
The Institute was extremely grateful to Professors Anotida Madzvamuse, Reidun Twarock, and Wendelin Werner for their help in producing INI's new "Welcome to" film in August of this year. There was, of course, only time to fit a small section of their respective interviews into that single four-and-a-half minute film. Consequently, we are pleased to share extended, three-minute cuts of each of these three guests for which we have created a new video series named "INI participant profiles".
KEYNOTE TALKS: Details of upcoming Rothschild and Kirk Fellowship lectures.
(above) Professor Gordana Todorov.
The two current INI programmes ("Mathematics of deep learning" and "Cluster algebras and representation theory") have, at the time of writing, each held either a Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellowship seminar or a Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellowship seminar. Details of the two talks that remain to be held between the two programmes are as follows:
"CAR Kirk Lecture: Cluster Algebras and Many Related Notions on One Picture"
Professor Gordana Todorov | Monday 1 November 2021 | 16:00-17:00
> https://www.newton.ac.uk/seminar/34108/
The CAR programme at INI is based around the notion of cluster algebras. It was the introduction of cluster algebras by Fomin and Zelevinsky that inspired and created very many beautiful connections between various fields of mathematics(and physics). This talk will be about one single picture as an example for many
different interpretations. First, there will be notions from cluster algebras: cluster variables, clusters, c-vectors, mutations, maximal green sequences and then there will be related notions: cluster categories, cluster titling objects, semi-invariants, stability conditions, picture groups, exceptional sequences, rooted trees, and possibly some more.
"MDL Rothschild Lecture: The mathematical universe behind deep neural networks"
Professor Helmut Bolcskei | Friday 10 December 2021 | 16:00-17:00
> https://www.newton.ac.uk/seminar/34235/
Deep neural networks have led to breakthrough results in numerous practical machine learning tasks such as image classification, image captioning, control-policy-learning to play the board game Go, and most recently the prediction of protein structures. In this lecture, we will attempt a journey through the mathematicaluniverse behind these practical successes, elucidating the theoretical underpinnings of deep neural networks in functional analysis, harmonic analysis, complex analysis, approximation theory, dynamical systems, Kolmogorov complexity, optimal transport, and fractal geometry.
