Welcome to Pure Mathematics
We are home to 30 faculty, four staff, approximately 60 graduate students, several research visitors, and numerous undergraduate students. We offer exciting and challenging programs leading to BMath, MMath and PhD degrees. We nurture a very active research environment and are intensely devoted to both ground-breaking research and excellent teaching.
News
Two Pure Math professors win Outstanding Performance Awards
The awards are given each year to faculty members across the University of Waterloo who demonstrate excellence in teaching and research.
Pure Math PhD student wins Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching
The award ($1000), which is given to up to four recipients annually, recognizes excellence in teaching by students, including intellectual vigour, skill in communication and presentation of subject matter, and concern for the needs of students.
Spring 2023 Graduands
Congratulations to Clement Wan, MMath and Eric Boulter, PhD, who convocated in Spring 2023. Best of luck in your future endeavours!
Events
Tilings and Tilability Learning Seminar
Leigh Foster, University of Waterloo
Introduction to planar tilings
From tangrams to tessellations to brick pavers, we have many real life examples of tilings of a planar region. In this learning seminar, we will get a gentle introduction to the math behind these ideas, and over the course of the term will be able to answer the questions: Given a set of tiles, can we determine if a given region is tilable? If so, do we have more than one way of laying out the tiles? How can we know when a tiling does not exist? To answer these questions, we'll use techniques including counting and coloring arguments, height functions from a more topological point of view, and a combinatorial group-theoretic approach, among others. No previous knowledge is needed, and no outside work is required! Come and listen and ask questions - everyone is welcome, and interruptions are expected.
For our first meeting, we will discuss the basics of tilings. What does it mean to tile a region, and what are some ways that these questions arise in mathematics?
MC 5403
Differential Geometry Working Seminar
Faisal Romshoo, University of Waterloo
Topological calibrations and their moduli spaces
We discuss an approach to deformation problems of geometric structures laid out in https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0112197 by Ryushi Goto. In particular, we will explore the cohomological conditions under which the moduli space of the geometric structures become smooth manifolds of finite dimension. As an application, we will prove the unobstructedness of G2 structures and if time permits, of Spin(7)-structures as well.
MC 5479
Joint Analysis and Algebraic Graph Theory Seminar
Daniel Gromada, Czech Technical University
Quantum association schemes
This talk is based on a preprint arXiv:2404.06157. We start by briefly explaining what a quantum group is and how quantum graphs are defined. Then, we recall what association schemes are and we apply the quantization procedure here. As a result, this allows to define distance regular and strongly regular quantum graphs. In addition, we observe that the duality for translation association schemes extends to the quantum setting.
MC 5417 or Join on Zoom