Events

Title: Ramsey degrees, big and small

Abstract: Many of the seminal results in finite Ramsey theory can be phrased by saying that a certain class of finite structures has the Ramsey property, such as the ordinary finite Ramsey theorem (the class of finite linear orders), the dual Ramsey theorem (the class of finite lex-ordered Boolean algebras), the Graham-Leeb-Rothschild theorem (the class of lex-ordered, finite-dimensional vector spaces over a fixed finite field), and the Nesetril-Rodl theorem (the class of finite ordered triangle-free graphs, among many others).

Title: Douglas–Rachford Algorithm for Control- and State-constrained Optimal Control Problems

Abstract: The Douglas - Rachford algorithm has been applied to many optimization problems due to its simplicity and efficiency but the application of this algorithm to optimal control is less common. In this talk we utilize this method to solve state- and control-constrained linear-quadratic optimal control problems.

Title: Modular representations of the symmetric group and categorification (part I)

Abstract: I'll give two talks on the representations of the symmetric group over small finite fields, in particular, their block structure, with an emphasis on the perspective from categorical actions of Lie algebras.  No previous background in modular representation theory will be assumed.  

Title: Ramsey Cayley graphs, random graph models, and information theory

Abstract: A graph is Ramsey if its largest clique or independent set is of size logarithmic in the number of vertices. While almost all graphs are Ramsey, there is still no known explicit construction of Ramsey graphs. Alon conjectured that every finite group has a Ramsey Cayley graph.

Title: Budget Feasible Mechanisms

Abstract: In the setting of budget feasible mechanism design, a buyer wants to purchase items from a set of agents. Each agent can supply at item at an incurred cost of c_i to themself, and the buyer wants to optimize over their own valuation for the set of items bought. The cost c_i is private information that the buyer doesn't have access to. The goal is to design a mechanism that is truthful, in the sense that the sellers do not have incentive to deviate from reporting their true costs, and budget feasible, in the sense that the total payments made to the sellers is within some budget B.

Title: Counting matroid extensions

Abstract: In this talk, we will discuss methods of counting the number of extensions of certain matroids. We will see that, in some cases, the number of extensions is surprisingly large. I will start by introducing matroids, so previous experience with matroids is not assumed.

Title: Thin distance-regular graphs with classical parameters $(D,q,q,\frac{q^{t}-1}{q-1}-1)$ with $t> D$ are the Grassmann graphs

Abstract: In the survey paper by Van Dam, Koolen and Tanaka (Distance-regular graphs, Electron. J. Comb., Dynamic Survey (2016), \#DS22), they asked to classify the thin $Q$-polynomial distance-regular graphs. In this talk, we will discuss our result which states that the Grassmann graphs with large diameter are characterized by their intersection numbers under the extra condition that they are thin.

This is joint work with Jack Koolen and Ying-Ying Tan.

Title: On the eigenvalues of the graphs D(5,q)

Abstract: In 1995, Lazebnik and Ustimenko introduced the family of q-regular graphs D(k, q), which is defined for any positive integer k and prime power q. The connected components of the graph D(k, q) have provided the best-known general lower bound on the size of a graph for any given order and girth to this day.

Title: Budget Feasible Mechanisms : Part II

Abstract: In the setting of budget feasible mechanism design, a buyer wants to purchase items from a set of agents. Each agent can supply at item at an incurred cost of c_i to themself, and the buyer wants to optimize over their own valuation for the set of items bought. The cost c_i is private information that the buyer doesn't have access to. The goal is to design a mechanism that is truthful, in the sense that the sellers do not have incentive to deviate from reporting their true costs, and budget feasible, in the sense that the total payments made to the sellers is within some budget B.

Title: Budget Feasible Mechanisms

Abstract: In the setting of budget feasible mechanism design, a buyer wants to purchase items from a set of agents. Each agent can supply at item at an incurred cost of c_i to themself, and the buyer wants to optimize over their own valuation for the set of items bought. The cost c_i is private information that the buyer doesn't have access to. The goal is to design a mechanism that is truthful, in the sense that the sellers do not have incentive to deviate from reporting their true costs, and budget feasible, in the sense that the total payments made to the sellers is within some budget B.