Colloquia, Seminars & Lectures

Colloquia, Seminars & Lectures

Colloquia  Junior Seminar  Lecture series

Methusalem Colloquia

The Methusalem colloquia are intended for a broad audience of graduate and PhD students, postdocs and professors. The series will include colloquia from guests as well as the first colloquium-style talk of the Methusalem Lecture Series.

Upcoming Colloquia

Where  When Speaker Talk
200B 00.16 4 June 2025 Paula Macedo Lins de Araujo (University of Lincoln) Reidemeister spectrum and zeta functions of groups

Past Colloquia

Where  When Speaker

Talk
200M 00.07 27 March 2025 Cyril Houdayer (Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris) Indecomposability and rigidity of dynamical systems arising from lattices

200B 00.16

  20 February 2025 Emmanuel Breuillard (Oxford University)

Non-commutative Littlewood-Offord theorems

200K.00.07

 18 April 2024 Simon Telen (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig) Euler discriminants in physics and statistics
200L.00.06 17 April  2024  Alain Valette (Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland) The Wasserstein distance on metric trees  
200K.00.06 12 March 2024 Sasha Viktorova (KU Leuven) An introduction to hypersurface singularities 
200L.00.06 22 February 2024 Marco Radeschi (Università di Torino) Invariant theory, without groups 
200L.00.06 30 November 2023 Jan Goedgebeur (KULAK) An introduction to computational graph theory and generation algorithms
200L.00.06 26 October 2023 Patrick De Causmaecker (KULAK) Computation of the ninth Dedekind number 
200K.00.07 11 May 2023 Igor Krasovsky (Imperial College London) Weak and strong confinement in the Freud ensemble of random matrices
200K.00.06 17 April 2023 Mateusz Piorkowski (KU Leuven) Lax pairs and scattering theory 
200L.00.07 17 March 2023   Alberto Rodríguez Vázquez (KU Leuven)  Isometric actions on symmetric spaces
200K.00.07 2 March 2023 Fatemeh Mohammadi (KU Leuven) The amplituhedron and positive geometries
200L.00.06 23 February 2023 Mike Whittaker (University of Glasgow) Aperiodic tilings, from the Domino problem to an aperiodic monotile
200M.00.06 8 December 2022 Sonja Hohloch (University of Antwerp) Geometry and dynamics of (hyper)semitoric Hamiltonian systems 
200M.00.06 14 March 2022 Guillem Blanco (KU Leuven) The complex zeta function of a singularity
  1 April 2022 Ian Charlesworth (KU Leuven) Regularity and entropy of non-commutative random variables
Online 7 December 2021 Aldo Witte (KU Leuven) Adding and removing singularities in symplectic geometry 
Online 25 November 2021 Daniel Drimbe (KU Leuven) Cocycle and orbit equivalence superrigidity for group actions
Online 29 April 2021 Grzegorz Świderski (KU Leuven) Spectral properties of Jacobi matrices
Online 25 March 25 2021 Feng Hao (KU Leuven) Holomorphic 1-forms and geometry of algebraic varieties
Online 18 February 2021 Joel Villatoro (KU Leuven) On integrating Lie algebras
Online 25 November 2020 Mateusz Wasilewski (KU Leuven) From random walks to q-deformed operator algebras
200B.00.16 2 December 2019 Gil Cavalcanti (Utrecht University) Corank one symplectic foliations
200L.00.06 5 November 2019 Alexey Bufetov (University of Bonn) Color-position symmetry in interacting particle systems
200L.00.06 17 October 2019 Paula Macedo Lins de Araujo (KU Leuven) Zeta functions of algebraic structures
200L.00.07 28 March 2019 Ana Khukhro (University of Cambridge) Expanders, and rigidity of finite quotients
200B.00.05 7 March 7 2019  Holly Krieger (University of Cambridge)  Complex dynamics and elliptic curves
200L.00.07

 14 February 2019

 Alexander Bufetov (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université.)

Determinantal point processes: quasi-symmetries, completeness, interpolation

Video
200B 01.16 13 December 2018 Gabor Szabo (KU Leuven) On classification of C*-algebras and their dynamics
200D.05.34 8 November 2018

Ori Yudilevich (KU Leuven)

 Cartan's Theory of Local Symmetries
200B.01.14 8 May, 2018 Roland Speicher (University of Saarbrücken) Regularity properties of non-commutative rational functions
200B.02.14 17 May 2018 Erik Koelink (Radboud University Nijmegen) Special functions and representation theory, a case study
200B.02.14

12 April 2018

 Thibault Pillon (KU Leuven) Coarse Embeddability, Coarse Amenability and Expanders
200B.02.14 15 March 2018 Jorge Castillejos (KU Leuven) Structure and classification of C*-algebras
200B.02.14

15 February 2018 

 Jean Baptiste Teyssier (KU Leuven) Moduli space in algebraic geometry and applications
200L. 00.07  30 November 2017

Alberto S. Cattaneo (Institut für Mathematik Universität Zürich)

 Geometrical construction of reduced phase spaces
200L.00.07 16 November 2017 Adrián González-Pérez (KU Leuven)

Fourier multipliers and p-integrability in non-Abelian groups
200L.00.07  9 November 2017

Michael Gekhtman (University of Notre Dame)

 Five Glimpses of Cluster Algebras
200B.01.05 19 October 2017 Timur Nasybullov (KU Leuven)

Knot recognition problem for different generalizations of classical knots
200B.02.18 

22 June 2017

 Laurentiu Maxim (University of Wisconsin-Madison )

Fundamental groups of complex quasiprojective manifolds
200B.02.16  15 June 2017 Marius Crainic (Utrecht University) Stability of Leaves

Colloquia, Seminars & Lectures

Colloquia  Junior Seminar  Lecture series

Methusalem Junior Seminar

The Junior Seminar in Pure Mathematics is an interdisciplinary seminar run by Ph.D. students and postdocs at KU Leuven. The seminar hosts a 1-hour talk each session.

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The aim is to provide accessible talks for postgraduate students in Differential and Algebraic geometry, Algebra and Number theory, Classical and Functional Analysis, Algebraic Topology and Group Theory and to stimulate informal discussions.

Upcoming Seminars

Where When Talks

Past Seminars

Where When

Talks
200B 00.16 April 22, 2025 14:00 - 16:00 Mario Klisse (Analysis) Word-Hyperbolic Groups: Properties and Applications
200B 00.16 April 22, 2025 10:00 - 12:00 Joren Matthys (Algebraic Topology and Group Theory) Introduction to Geometric Group Theory
Online June 6, 2024 14:00 - 15:00 Aaron Kettner (Charles University - Czech Academy of Sciences) C*-algebras and groupoids
Online March 1, 2024 13:00 - 15:00 Oleksandra Lapiha (Royal Holloway University of London) “SIS-with-hints” assumptions, reductions and lattice-based polynomial commitments
200B 00.18 February 13, 2024 13:00 - 15:00 Simen Moe (Imperial College London) Stable rationality of polytopes
Online January 25, 2024 15:00 - 16:00 Alex Evetts (University of Manchester) Equations in groups via formal languages
200B 02.18 November 16, 2023 14:00 - 15:00 Matteo Bonino (University of Turin) Introduction to Orlicz spaces, role of Orlicz-Lebesgue exponents and Fourier type operators
Online June 22, 2023 15:00 - 16:00 Gemma Crowe (Heriot-Watt University) Conjugacy, languages and groups
200L 00.07 May 25, 2023 13:00 - 14:30 Vira Raichenko (UPotsdam) Introduction to Topological Data Analysis and its Applications
Online May 4, 2023 15:00 - 16:00 Michal Szachniewicz (University of Oxford) Existential closedness of Q^alg as a globally valued field

200A 00.225 (Aula Erik Duval)

April 17, 2023

 15:00 - 16:00 Alexis Marchand (University of Cambridge) Stable commutator length in free and surface groups
Online March 23, 2023 15:00 - 16:00 Alfilgen Sebandal (Mindanao State University, Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT)) Leavitt path algebras and graph monoids
Online November 24, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Rafaela Gesing (University of Münster) Classification of C*-algebras and Cartan Subalgebras
Online December 15, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Felicien Comtat (Queen Mary University of London) Trace formulae and distribution of Satake perameters of automorphic representations
Online November 3, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Robert Neagu (University of Oxford) Topological dimension of C*-algebras
Online October 20, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Owen Tanner (University of Glasgow) Thompson's Group V and the Cuntz Algebra
Online June 23, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Jonathan Taylor (University of Göttingen) C*-inclusions arising from twists over effective groupoids
Online June 02, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Emma Brakkee (University of Amsterdam) General type results for moduli spaces of hyperkähler varieties
Online May 12, 2022

15:00 - 16:00 Marcos Origlia (FaMAF-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba-Argentina & CONICET) An overview of locally conformally Kähler geometry
Online April 21, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Apurva Seth (IISER Bhopal) AF-Algebras and their Nonstable K-Theory
Online March 31, 2022 15:00 - 16:00 Quentin Posva (EPFL, Lausanne) Moduli of algebraic varieties

Online

 March 10, 2022

15:00 - 16:00 Mauro Varesco (Bonn University) The Hodge conjecture for powers of K3 surfaces
Online February 17, 2022 15:30 - 16:30 Chenyu Bai (Sorbonne University) Lagrangian Families of Hyper-Kaehler manifolds
Online December 16, 2021 15:00 - 16:00 Jonas Flechsig (Universität Bielefeld) Orbifold braids, Artin groups and complex braid groups
Online November 25, 2021

15:00 - 16:00 Léonard Pille-Schneider (CMLS-École polytechnique) Degenerations of complex varieties and hybrid spaces
Online October 28, 2021 15:00 - 16:00 Jonas Wahl (Hausdorff Center of Mathematics Bonn) An introduction to diagram algebras
Online May 6, 2021 15:00- 16:00 Duvan Cardona Sanchez (Ghent University). Global theory of pseudo-differential operators for sub-Riemannian structures on compact Lie groups.
Online April 22, 2021 15:00 - 16:00 Laura Pertusi (Università di Milano). Derived categories, stability conditions and applications to Fano varieties.
Online April 1, 2021 15:00 - 16:00 Joao Nuno Mestre (University of Coimbra). What is a Lie groupoid and how do we use one in a theorem?
Online March 18, 2021 15:00- 16:00 Mariusz Tobolski (University of Wroclaw ). Free actions of groups on C*-algebras

Online

 March 4, 2021

15:00 - 16:00 Wolfgang Moens (Universität Wien) about "Groups with an automorphism satisfying an identity".

Online

 February 18, 2021

15:00 - 16:00 Andrés Jaramillo Puentes (Universität Duisburg Essen) about “From two points and a line to Gromov-Witten invariants and beyond”.
Online December 17, 2020 15:00 - 16:00 Charlotte Kirchhoff-Lukat (KU Leuven). Introduction to Generalized Complex Geometry
Online December 10, 2020 15:00 - 16:00 Grzegorz Swiderski (KU Leuven) about "What is ... spectral theory of orthogonal polynomials?"
Online November 26, 2020 15:30 - 16:30 Fabrizio Bianchi (Université de Lille) about "What is... the Mandelbrot set?".

Online

 November 5, 2020

15:00 - 16:00 Romina Arroyo (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) about "The Alekseevskii conjecture: Overview and open questions".

200B.02.18

 

 February 27, 2020

16:00 - 17:00 Céline Bonandrini (Paris-Saclay)  - Slope stability on curves

17:00 - 17:20 Coffee Break

17:20 - 18:20 Réamonn Ó Buachalla (ULB) - Dolbeault-Dirac Operators on Quantum Flag Manifolds
200B.02.18 December 11, 2019

16:00 - 17:00 Geoffrey Janssens (VUB) - Growth functions: A uniform journey with Amitsur and Lehmer

17:00 - 17:20 Coffee Break

17:20 - 18:20 Marco Usula (KU Leuven - ULB) - Yang-Mills connections and the geometry of 4-manifolds
200B.02.18 November 28, 2019

16:00 - 17:00 Sam Tertooy (KU Leuven - Algebraic Topology and Group Theory) - Twisted conjugacy for nilpotent groups.

17:00 - 17:30 Coffee Break

17:30 - 18:30 Matthias Valvekens (KU Leuven - Functional Analysis) - A brief foray into the world of subfactors
200B.02.18

October 23, 2019

16:00 - 17:00 Fabrizio Anella (Roma Tre) - The twisted cotangent bundle of a hyperkähler manifold.

17:00 - 17:30 Coffee Break

17:30 - 18:30 Ujué Etayo (TU Graz) - Distributing many points on a sphere.
200B.02.18 April 1st, 2019   

Juan Criado del Rey (KU Leuven - Analysis). Curvature in Analysis and Lie algebras (15:00 – 16:00)

Coffee Break (16:00-16:30)

Marcos Origlia (KU Leuven Kulak - Algebraic Topology and Group Theory). Curvature in Analysis and Lie algebras (16:30-17:30)
200B.02.18

February 28, 2019

Calum Spicer (Imperial College). Foliations in algebraic geometry (16:00 – 17:00)

Coffee Break (17:00-17:30)

Alfonso Garmendia (KU Leuven). Foliations in differential geometry (17:30-18:30)

Organizers

Are you a Ph.D. student or postdoc? Do you want to give or invite someone to give a talk?  Don't hesitate to contact the organizers.

Maarten Lathouwers contact
Matteo Pagliero contact
Nick Shamaiev contact
 
 
 
 

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Colloquia, Seminars & Lectures

lectures

Colloquia  Junior seminar  Lecture series

Methusalem Lecture Series

The Methusalem Lecture Series are mini-courses directed towards a broad audience of graduate students, PhD students, postdoctoral researches and professors. Each mini-course will start with a colloquium-style talk intended to be both accesible and attractive to mathematicians from diverse areas and will continue with a series of 3 to 5 lectures spanning 2 hours each.

 

Upcoming Mini-Courses:

 

Past Mini-Courses:

An introduction to hypersurface singularities 

By Sasha Viktorova

Lectures

  • Tuesday, 12 March, 2024; 16:15-17:15 in 200K.00.06 (Colloquium-style talk).
  • Monday, 18 March, 2024: 16:00-17:00 in 200B 00.18: Invariants of critical points.
  • Thursday, 21 March, 2024: 16:00-17:00 in in 200B 01.05: Picard-Lefschetz theory .
  • Monday, 25 March, 2024: 16:00-17:00 in 200B 00.18: Spectrum of singularities.
  • Thursday, 28 March, 2024: 16:00-17:00 in 200B.00.16: Deformation theory .

Direct and inverse scattering

By Mateusz Piorkowski

Lectures

  • Monday, 17 April, 2023; 16:15-17:15 in 200K.00.06 (Colloquium-style talk).
  • Thursday, 20 April, 2023: 10:30-12:00 in 200B 00.18: Self-adjoint Schroedinger operators.
  • Monday, 24 April, 2023: 10:30-12:00 in in 200B 01.18: Jost solutions and the direct scattering transform.
  • Thursday, 27 April, 2023: 10:30-12:00 in 200B 00.18: Lax pairs and the KdV equation.
  • Tuesday, 2 May, 2023: 14:00-15:30 in 200B.02.18: Time evolution of the scattering data under the KdV flow.
  • Thursday, 4 May, 2023: 10:30-12:00 in 200B 00.18: The inverse scattering transform via Riemann-Hilbert problems.

Abstract:
In the first part of this minicourse, we will review some basic theory of unbounded self-adjoint operators, in particular in the case of Schroedinger operators. We then proceed with the introduction of Jost solutions and scattering data, which lead us to the direct scattering transform. 

In the second part we draw a surprising connection between scattering theory of Schroedinger operators and the KdV equation, which is a nonlinear wave equation. We show how the direct scattering transform can be used to linearize the KdV equation, an idea that goes back to Gardner, Greene, Kruskal and Miura, which was subsequently generalized by Lax via what is now know as Lax pairs. 

In the last part, we will introduce Riemann-Hilbert problems and in particular show how the inverse scattering transform can be formulated as a Riemann-Hilbert problem. This allows us the reduce solving the KdV equation to solving a Riemann-Hilbert problem for which many methods have been developed in the past 30 years.
 

Lie groups

By Alberto Rodríguez Vázquez

Lectures

  • Friday, 17 March, 2023; 15:00-16:00 (Colloquium-style talk).
  • Monday, 20 March, 2023: Review of Lie groups, 10:30-12:00 in 200B.01.05.
  • Thursday, 23 March, 2023: Structure of compact Lie groups, 10:30-12:00 in 200B.00.16.
  • Monday, 27 March, 2023: Representation theory of SU(2), 10:30-12:00 in 200B.02.18.
  • Monday, 3 April, 2023: Root theory and Dynkin diagrams, 10:30-12:00 in 200B.02.18. 

Regularity and entropy of non-commutative random variables

By Ian Charlesworth

Lectures

  • Monday, April 1, 2022; 14:00-15:00 (Colloquium-style talk)

  • Thursday, May 5, 2022: Microstates and non-microstates free entropies: examples and properties, 14:00 (200B.02.18).

  • Monday, May 9, 2022: Polynomial convolutions of free variables, 11:30 (200B.01.18).

  • Thursday, May 12, 2022: Free entropy dimension and the absence of atoms, 14:00 (200B.02.18).

  • Monday, May 16, 2022: Consequences for von Neumann algebras, 11:30 (200B.02.18).

  • Thursday, May 19, 2022:  Connections between \chi and \chi^* or Free Stein dimension and polynomials, 14:00 (200B.02.18).

Spectral properties of Jacobi matrices

By Grzegorz Świderski

Lectures

  • Thursday, April 29, 2021; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk)
  • Thursday, May 6, 2021; 16:15-17:15 (online)
  • Thursday, May 20, 2021; 16:15-17:15 (online)
  • Thursday, May 27, 2021; 16:15-17:15 (online)

From random walks to q-deformed operator algebras

By Mateusz Wasilewski

Lectures

  • Wednesday, November 25, 2020; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk)
  • Wednesday, December 2, 2020; 16:15-17:15 (online)
  • Wednesday, December 9, 2020; 16:15-17:15 (online)
  • Wednesday, December 16, 2020; 16:15-17:15 (online)

Dirichlet series and zeta functions of groups

By Paula Macedo Lins de Araujo

Lectures

  • Thursday, October 17, 2019; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk)
  • Tuesday, October 22, 2019; 14:30-16:00 (room 200G 01.73)
  • Tuesday, November 12, 2019; 14:30-16:00 (room 200G 01.73)
  • Tuesday, November 19, 2019; 14:30-16:00 (room 200G 01.73)
  • Tuesday, November 26, 2019; 14:30-16:00 (room 200G 01.73)

Cartan's Theory of Local Symmetries

By Ori Yudilevich

Lectures

  • Thursday, November 8, 2018; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk)

  • Thursday, November 15, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200G 00.63.

  • Thursday, November 22, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200G 00.63.

  • Thursday, December 6, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200C 01.08.

Coarse Embeddability, Coarse Amenability and Expanders

By Thibault Pillon

Lectures

  • Thursday, April 12, 2018; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk); Room: 200B.01.16.
  • Monday, April 16, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200B 01.05
  • Monday, April 23, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200B 00.07
  • Monday, April 30, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200B 00.07 (canceled)
  • Monday, May 07, 2018; 14:00-16:00; Room: 200B 00.18 

Structure and classification of C*-algebras

By Jorge Castillejos

Lectures

  • Thursday March 15, 2018; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk); Room: 200B 02.14.
  • Tuesday March 20, 2018; 16:00-18:00. Room:  200B 01.16.
  • Tuesday March 27, 2018; 16:00-18:00. Room:  200B 01.16.
  • Tuesday April 3, 2018; 16:00-18:00. Room:  200B 01.16.

Moduli space in algebraic geometry and applications.

By Jean-Baptiste Teyssier

Lectures

  • Thursday February 15, 2018; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk); Room:  200B 02.14.

  • Friday February 23, 2018; 14:00-16:00. Room: 200B 01.14.

  • Tuesday February 27, 2018; 14:00-16:00. Room: 200B 02.14.

Fourier multipliers and p-integrability in non-Abelian groups

By Adrián González-Pérez

Lectures

  • Thursday November 16, 2017; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk); Room: 200L 00.07; Slides.

  • Tuesday November 21, 2017; 16:00-18:00 Room: 200B.02.18.

  • Tuesday November 28, 2017; 16:00-18:00. Room: 200B.02.18.
  • Tuesday December  5, 2017; 16:00-18:00. Room: 200B.02.18.

Knot recognition problem for different generalizations of classical knots.

By Timur Nasybullov

Lectures

  • Thursday October 19, 2017; 16:15-17:15 (Colloquium-style talk); Room: 200B.01.05; Slides.

  • Tuesday October 24, 2017; 15:00-17:00. Room: 200B.02.18

  • Tuesday October 31, 2017; 15:00-17:00. Room: 200B.02.18

  • Tuesday November 7, 2017; 15:00-17:00. Room: 200B.02.18