Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Sylvester Eriksson-Bique is visiting OIST from 2024-01-08 until 2024-03-28 through the "Theoretical Sciences Visiting Program" (TSVP). Find out more about the TSVP on the program website:
oist.jp/visiting-program.
Abstract: Whether the graph of roads in Okinawa, or connections in social media, data often comes to as a network. We may wish to study optimization problems in such networks: such as shortest path or decompositions of the space. It turns out, that embedding the network into a linear space is a powerful way of simplifying these problems. We will first see some examples of this. Given the remarkable implications of such embeddings, we then wish to study when and how to construct such embeddings. This turns out to be a rich mathematical question, and I will be giving a mini course at OIST on this as well. In the talk, I will explain some ways embeddings can help you in your problems. I will also show you, with some pictures, some situations where an embedding can be very difficult to construct.
Profile: I am primarily interested in geometric problems which arise in the context of "rough" spaces: embedding problems of metric spaces, the structure of boundaries of hyperbolic groups, the geometry of fractal spaces arising from dynamics, or fractal properties of sub-Riemannian geometries. Since many of these concepts are related to "quasisymmetric mappings", I would describe these questions as being part of the "quasiworld". Especially embedding questions are not only of theoretical interest. They arise naturally in data analysis and the analysis of certain relaxation methods to solve optimization problems. Further, these questions have profound connections to the analysis on such rough spaces and concepts that come from first order analysis of metric spaces. Indeed, these notions can obstruct embeddings, prevent certain geometries from existing, or reveal subtle geometric facts about dynamical systems. Their study also leads to natural invariants that can be used to classify and distinguish spaces from each other. Especially recently, I have come to see that the study of Analysis on Metric spaces can lead to answering some difficult open problems related to geometric group theory. However, an obstacle to making progress in this direction is that many fundamental notions in Analysis on metric spaces remain poorly understood. It is there, that I strive to develop new techniques, concepts and results, that help us answer these open problems.
#OIST #OIST_TSVP #Mathematics #Embeddings #MetricSpaces #Theoretical #Science #VisitingProgram #Okinawa #TSVP
Sylvester Eriksson-Bique is visiting OIST from 2024-01-08 until 2024-03-28 through the "Theoretical Sciences Visiting Program" (TSVP). Find out more about the TSVP on the program website:
oist.jp/visiting-program.
Abstract: Whether the graph of roads in Okinawa, or connections in social media, data often comes to as a network. We may wish to study optimization problems in such networks: such as shortest path or decompositions of the space. It turns out, that embedding the network into a linear space is a powerful way of simplifying these problems. We will first see some examples of this. Given the remarkable implications of such embeddings, we then wish to study when and how to construct such embeddings. This turns out to be a rich mathematical question, and I will be giving a mini course at OIST on this as well. In the talk, I will explain some ways embeddings can help you in your problems. I will also show you, with some pictures, some situations where an embedding can be very difficult to construct.
Profile: I am primarily interested in geometric problems which arise in the context of "rough" spaces: embedding problems of metric spaces, the structure of boundaries of hyperbolic groups, the geometry of fractal spaces arising from dynamics, or fractal properties of sub-Riemannian geometries. Since many of these concepts are related to "quasisymmetric mappings", I would describe these questions as being part of the "quasiworld". Especially embedding questions are not only of theoretical interest. They arise naturally in data analysis and the analysis of certain relaxation methods to solve optimization problems. Further, these questions have profound connections to the analysis on such rough spaces and concepts that come from first order analysis of metric spaces. Indeed, these notions can obstruct embeddings, prevent certain geometries from existing, or reveal subtle geometric facts about dynamical systems. Their study also leads to natural invariants that can be used to classify and distinguish spaces from each other. Especially recently, I have come to see that the study of Analysis on Metric spaces can lead to answering some difficult open problems related to geometric group theory. However, an obstacle to making progress in this direction is that many fundamental notions in Analysis on metric spaces remain poorly understood. It is there, that I strive to develop new techniques, concepts and results, that help us answer these open problems.
#OIST #OIST_TSVP #Mathematics #Embeddings #MetricSpaces #Theoretical #Science #VisitingProgram #Okinawa #TSVP






![Panayotis Kevrekidis: Nonlinear Waves and their Applications (TSVP Talk at OIST)
Title: Nonlinear Waves and Their Applications: From Oceans to Planets, From Lasers to Quantum Fluids, From Origami to Pandemics
Speaker: Panayotis Kevrekidis, Distinguished University Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Abstract: In this talk, I will explore a number of ideas about nonlinear waves and their implications to a diverse array of fields: from mathematics to physics, engineering, computing, biology, and even (a little) art. I will begin with some history from 18th and 19th century fluid waves in channels and oceans, associated engineering observations, and artistic renderings. Next, I will share an intriguing story of (non) equity and inclusion around the first computer in post-atomic-bomb Los Alamos National Lab. The presentation will then pass through some Nobel Prize winning physical ideas related to the laser, quantum fluids, and some of their recent variations pursued experimentally including at Amherst. Finally, we will touch upon how in the past few years such wave phenomena have emerged in exotic materials, such as lattices made of origami elements, and how they have been leveraged toward studying the spread of pandemic infections.
Profile: Professor Kevrekidis studies a variety of systems stemming from the mathematical physics of nonlinear optical systems, of crystalline materials, as well as from the ultracold atomic setting of Bose-Einstein Condensates. The research mainly revolves around the existence, stability and dynamics of localized (solitary wave) structures in such one-, two- and three-dimensional setups, often described by equations of Nonlinear Schrodinger or Klein-Gordon type. Besides this main thrust of research Professor Kevrekidis also maintains a wide variety of additional modeling interests including mathematical biology [especially tumor angiogenesis, nephron dynamics and DNA models], simple cosmological models, the nucleation of liquid droplets, phase transition phenomena, catalytic chemistry and associated reaction-diffusion models, and dynamics and energy landscapes of glassy materials among others.
Kevrekidis is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). He has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ioannina, Greece (2023), and has been elected in 2024 as a member of the European Academy for Sciences and the Arts (EASA).
Find out more about the TSVP on the program website: https://www.oist.jp/visiting-program
#OIST #OIST_TSVP #NonlinearOpticalSystems #mathematics #physics #research #oist #oist_tsvp #Theoretical #Science #VisitingProgram #Okinawa #TSVP Panayotis Kevrekidis: Nonlinear Waves and their Applications (TSVP Talk at OIST)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PI5uHRArr10/mqdefault.jpg)



