Faculty Seminar

Our internal faculty seminar is affectionately called ANOMALY (a non-obligatory meeting at lunch yum!). Our goal is to demonstrate for each other various types of computational or classificatory results that are easily replicable. For the spring of 2011, talks are still being scheduled.

Student Seminar

The student seminar provides an excellent opportunity for Wellesley College students to present mathematical research and different topics to both their peers and faculty. Presentations are usually substantial, typically lasting about fifty minutes from 12:30 to 1:20. Speakers therefore develop both public speaking and researching skills through their participation.

Students who are interested in speaking should contact Professors Fernandez or Volic in the fall and Professors Lange or Schultz in the spring. Lunch is served at every seminar during the semester. All students are welcome to attend.


Spring 2012 seminars

January 30 Prof. Andrew Schultz Polynomial Generalizations of binomial coefficients
February 6 Erica Dohring Applications of Operations Research in Physical Oceanography
February 13 Melinda Lanius and Joy Das Putnam 2011 solutions
February 27 Stephanie Welch Exploring Incompressibility: What makes a number random?
March 5 Caroline Parnass, Laura Liu Putnam 2011 Solutions, Part II
March 12 Ginny DeviChou Cardinality and the Continuum Hypothesis
March 26 Michelle Park Derivation of Van der Waals
April 2 Laura Liu Optimization through Linear Programming
April 9 Ran Ji Super Awesome Stuff: Linear Forms Over Finite Abelian Groups


Interested in Speaking in the Student Seminar?

Any student interested in lecturing may seek faculty advice on finding a topic appropriate for her; a list of possible student talks is also available here. A PLTC public speaking tutor will be able to help in preparation. To see the seminars presented in the past, please click here. This website offers tips on giving a good presentation, as well as this document. Answers to Frequently Asked Questions are also available.

For students who already have a topic in mind, this is a list of faculty members who can help assist you as you develop your presentation.

Stanley Chang (on leave '11-'12)
  • Applications of linear algebra to economics, genetics and cryptography
  • Number theory
  • Basic topology, the classification of surfaces
Alexander Diesl
  • Various topics in algebra and number theory
Oscar Fernandez
  • Hamiltonian and non-Hamiltonian Mechanics and Integrability
  • Dynamical Systems
  • Mathematical Physics
Megan Kerr
  • Non-Euclidean geometry: the parallel postulate
  • Sphere-packing
  • Minimal surfaces, double bubble theorem
Karen Lange
  • Topics in Logic; the Recursion Theorem, Goedel's theorems, set theory
Martin Magid
  • Topics in geometry: the Theorem Egregium, the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem
  • Set theory, Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem
  • Non-parametric statistics tests
Andy Schultz
  • Number theoretic topics including error-correcting codes and check-digit schemes, primality testing and pseudoprimes, the nature of $\pi$ (its irrationality, its decimal expansion, etc.), etc.
  • Linear algebra topics including applications image compression and Markov processes
 Alan Shuchat
  • Infinite-dimensional vector spaces, Banach and Hilbert spaces
  • Linear programming and optimization
  • Queues and probability
Fred Shultz (on leave '11-'12)
  • Linear algebra and applications, including applications to quantum mechanics
  • Dynamical systems, chaos theory
  • Functional analysis, including infinite-dimensional linear algebra, quantum computing, Fourier series
  • Topics in combinatorics
Jonathan Tannenhauser
  • Physics
  • Connections between mathematics and physics or biology
Ann Trenk
  • Topics in graph theory
  • Topics in combinatorics
Ismar Volic
  • Topics in topology: classification of surfaces, the fundamental group, topological groups, interplay between geometry and analysis
  • Knot theory, Seifert surfaces, the Jones polynomial, Poincare conjecture
  • Topics in number theory: quadratic reciprocity, Diophantine equations, cryptography, open problems

Click here for a list of speakers from previous years.