CR geometry studies real hypersurfaces in complex vector spaces and their generalizations, CR manifolds. In many cases of interest to complex analysis and PDE, CR manifolds can be considered ``curved versions" of homogeneous spaces according to Elie Cartan’s generalization of Klein’s Erlangen program. Which homogeneous space is the ``flat model" of a CR manifold depends on the Levi form, a tensor named after a mathematician who used it to characterize boundaries of pseudoconvex domains. As in the analytic setting, the Levi form plays a central role in the geometry of CR manifolds, which we explore in relation to their homogeneous models.

The cellular cytoskeleton is made up of protein polymers (filaments) that are essential in proper cell and neuronal function as well as in development. These filaments represent the roads along which most protein transport occurs inside cells. I will discuss several examples where questions about filament-cargo interactions require the development of novel mathematical modeling, analysis, and simulation. Protein cargoes such as neurofilaments and RNA molecules bind to and unbind from cellular roads called microtubules, switching between bidirectional transport, diffusion, and stationary states. Since these transport models can be analytically intractable, we have proposed asymptotic methods in the framework of partial differential equations and stochastic processes which are useful in understanding large-time transport properties. I will discuss a recent project where we use stochastic modeling to understand how filament orientations may influence sorting of cargo in dendrites during neural development and axonal injury.

We show how algebraic relations can be encoded in suggestive topological diagrams and use this to prove various algebraic equations in a purely pictorial way. We will first go over a few canonical examples: monoids, self-dual objects, Frobenius algebras, and monads. Then we will briefly discuss the underlying theory that makes this miracle rigorous.

THIS JUST IN - An Abstract: I plan to speak about the good old Calabi Conjecture, and its beautiful solution by Yau, that gave gim the Fields Medal. I will start with some background material, and see how far we can get into the proof!

I will give an overview of some of the classical results on the topology of Lie groups, including Hopf's theorem which fully determines the cohomology algebra over the real numbers of any Lie group. We will also discuss how the deRham cohomology of a compact Lie group can be represented by bi-invariant forms. In addition, we will discuss first and the second homotopy groups of Lie groups.