Past Events

E.g., Apr 19, 2026


colloquium Mar 20, 2026 free slot

March 20, 2026

ESB 2012 and Zoom

If you happen to have a visitor at this time who excels in giving talks in addition to being a talented researcher, we would greatly appreciate it if you could let us know.

TBA

***** There will be coffee, tea and snacks at PIMS from 2:30 PM to 3 PM.

*****Zoom information... Read more

Natalia Mora

UBC
A brief introduction to information theory

March 19, 2026

ESB 4133

This talk will include an introduction to entropy in the language of random variables and stationary stochastic processes, as well as an introduction to Shannon's classical coding theorem for discrete memoryless channels Read more

Giuseppe Genovese

Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg & UBC
From belief propagation to approximate message passing in a simple model

March 18, 2026

ESB 2012

The belief propagation (BP) equations are recursive equations for the one dimensional marginals of a given probability distribution. A key property is that there is a graphical representation of the dependency structure, the so-called factor graph. If the factor graph is a tree, it is possible... Read more

  • Probability

Guiseppe Genovese

Institute of Mathematics of the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg
From belief propagation to approximate message passing in a simple model

March 18, 2026

The belief propagation (BP) equations are recursive equations for the one dimensional marginals of a given probability distribution. A key property is that there is a graphical representation of the dependency structure, the so-called factor graph. If the factor graph is a tree, it is possible... Read more

  • Probability

Dr. Ben Ashby

SFU
Math-Bio: Causes and consequences of coevolutionary cycling

March 18, 2026

ESB 4133

Host–parasite interactions often resemble an evolutionary arms race, where each side must continually adapt just to keep up. These dynamics can produce oscillations in allele frequencies—often called Red Queen dynamics—that are a hallmark of host–parasite coevolution. Despite their prominence,... Read more

  • Mathematical Biology

Dr. Ben Ashby

SFU
Math-Bio: Causes and consequences of coevolutionary cycling

March 18, 2026

ESB 4133

Host–parasite interactions often resemble an evolutionary arms race, where each side must continually adapt just to keep up. These dynamics can produce oscillations in allele frequencies—often called Red Queen dynamics—that are a hallmark of host–parasite coevolution. Despite their prominence,... Read more

  • Mathematical Biology

Xinchun Ma

MIT
Affine Springer fibers and Hilbert scheme of points on the plane

March 16, 2026

MATH 104

Springer fibers are certain subvarieties of the flag variety that provide a geometric construction of representations of the symmetric group. For instance, the graded Frobenius character of their cohomology are the modified Hall–Littlewood symmetric functions. Many recent works have studied two... Read more

  • Algebra and Algebraic geometry

Eviatar Bach


Learning probabilistic filters for data assimilation

March 13, 2026

ESB 2012 and Zoom

Filtering is a core task in many areas of science and engineering, including weather and climate prediction, where it is known as data assimilation. It involves estimating the conditional probability distribution of a dynamical system's states given partial and noisy observations – a problem... Read more

Doug Lind

University of Washington
Periodic points and counterexamples to a variant of Furstenberg's Conjecture

March 12, 2026

ESB 4127

In the classical setting of x2 and x3 acting on the circle group, the original (and unsolved) Furstenberg Conjecture is that the only continuous probability measure simultaneously invariant under both is Lebesgue measure. A stronger conjecture, attributed to Furstenberg, is that if a continuous... Read more

Xin Zhou

Cornell University
Volume Spectrum, minimal and constant mean curvature surfaces

March 12, 2026

ESB 5104

The volume spectrum is an analogue of the Laplace spectrum, defined through the area functional together with homological or cohomological relations in the space of hypercycles. In this talk, I will introduce several versions of the volume spectrum and highlight its applications in geometric... Read more

  • Differential geometry
  • Mathematical Physics
  • Partial Differential Equations