Back to School Seminar

grad students share math they've been up to this summer

Organizer: Bryan Lu (blu17@uw.edu)

Meetings: Fridays 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM @ PDL C-038

Over the summer, the graduate students at UW have learned many new and interesting topics from conferences, summer schools, reading courses, or just on their own. This seminar is intended to be a place where we can share what we have recently learned to our fellow graduate students. Not only does this serve as a way to reengage with our existing graduate student community after the summer, but it also welcomes the incoming cohort of students and introduces topics that we are interested in.

This seminar is aimed at all of our graduate students, so talks should be accessible to a general audience. Ideally, at least \(\frac 1e\) of your talk should be accessible to incoming first-year students. Talks should be approximately 51 minutes long, with time for questions afterwards.


Schedule

Week 2 – October 3, 2025

Speaker: Nelson Niu

Title: A categorical framework for coherence theorems

Abstract: Categories with operations that are associative, commutative, and distributive up to isomorphism abound in mathematics: for instance, in homotopy theory, they are the inputs to infinite loop space machines and K-theory functors. But before we can work with such categories, we must prove coherence theorems for them to ensure these structures are well-behaved. In ongoing joint work with Jonathan Rubin, we establish a general categorical approach to proving such coherence theorems versatile enough to incorporate (weak) distributivity laws, module and algebra categories, and the higher arity twisted products that appear in equivariant settings. Building on Mac Lane’s original coherence proof for symmetric monoidal categories, we employ tools from logic and rewriting theory to study the relevant universal parameter categories, clarifying the necessary axioms.

Week 3 – October 10, 2025

Speaker: Grace O’Brien

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 4 – October 17, 2025

Speaker: Clare Minnerath

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 5 – October 24, 2025

Speaker: Ethan MacBrough

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 6 – October 31, 2025

Speaker: Connor McCausland

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 7 – November 7, 2025

Speaker: Dan Guyer

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 8 – November 14, 2025

Speaker: Varun Shah

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 9 – November 21, 2025

Speaker: Ting Gong

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Week 11 – December 5, 2025

Speaker: Bryan Lu

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD