Many modern problems in data science aim to efficiently and accurately extract important features and make predictions from high dimensional and large data sets. Naturally occurring structure in the data underpins the success of many contemporary approaches, but large gaps between theory and practice remain. In this talk, I will present recent progress on two different methods for nonparametric regression that can be viewed as the projection of a lifted formulation of the problem with a simple stochastic or convex geometric description, allowing the projection to encapsulate the data structure. In particular, I will first describe how the theory of stationary random tessellations in stochastic geometry can address the computational and theoretical challenges of random decision forests with non-axis-aligned splits. Second, I will present a new approach to convex regression that returns non-polyhedral convex estimators compatible with semidefinite programming. These works open many directions of future work at the intersection of stochastic and convex geometry, machine learning, and optimization.

A major goal in complex dynamics is to understand "dynamical moduli spaces"; that is, conformal conjugacy classes of holomorphic dynamical systems. One of the great successes in this regard is the study of the moduli space of quadratic polynomials; it is isomorphic to $\mathbb C$. This moduli space contains the famous Mandelbrot set, which has been extensively studied over the past 40 years. Understanding other dynamical moduli spaces to the same extent tends to be more challenging as they are often higher-dimensional. In this talk, we will begin with an overview of complex dynamics, focusing on the moduli space of quadratic rational maps, which is isomorphic to $\mathbb C^2$. We will explore this space, finding many interesting objects along the way. Note: special tea at 2:45.

Let $G=G(N,p)$ be an Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi graph on $N$ vertices (where each pair is connected by an edge independently with probability $p$). We view $N$ as going to infinity, with $p$ possibly going to zero with $N$. What is the probability that $G$ contains twice as many triangles (triples of vertices with all three pairs connected) as we would expect? I will discuss recent progress on this ``infamous upper tail" problem, and more generally on upper tail estimates for counts of any fixed subgraph. These problems serve as a test bed for the emerging theory of \emph{nonlinear large deviations}, and also connect with issues in extending the theory of \emph{graph limits} to handle sparse graphs. In particular, I will discuss our approach to the upper tail problems via new versions of the classic regularity and counting lemmas from extremal combinatorics, specially tailored to the study of random graphs in the large deviations regime. This talk is based on joint work with Amir Dembo.

Markov chains are random processes that retain no memory of the past. The mixing time of a Markov chain is the time it takes for it to reach equilibrium. During the last three decades, there has been a lot of progress in developing various techniques to estimate mixing times for various chains and to understand the cutoff phenomenon which means that the Markov chain has an abrupt convergence to equilibrium. We will present recent work establishing cutoff for the random to random card shuffle which confirms a 2001 conjecture of Diaconis. We will also present a proof of uniform lower bounds for Glauber dynamics for the Ising model, extending a result of Ding and Peres. The proofs employ both probabilistic and algebraic techniques.

Consider the problem of recovering a rank 1 tensor of order k that has been subject to Gaussian noise. We will begin by reviewing results surrounding the statistical limits of maximum likelihood estimation for this problem and discuss an geometric analogue of the well-known BBP phase transition from the matrix setting. We then discuss recent analyses of the behavior of this problem from an optimization perspective. While the threshold for estimation occurs at a finite signal-to-noise ratio, it is expected that one needs a polynomially diverging signal-to-noise ratio to be able to do so efficiently. We present a recent study of the thresholds for efficient recovery for a simple family of algorithms, Langevin dynamics and gradient descent, to better understand the mechanism for this diverging statistical-to-computational gap. I will report on recent works with Ben Arous–Gheissari on the algorithmic threshold and Lopatto-Miolane on the statistical threshold.

Interacting particle systems are models that involve many randomly evolving agents (i.e., particles). These systems are widely used in describing real-world phenomena. In this talk we will walk through three facets of interacting particle systems, namely the law of large numbers, random fluctuations, and large deviations. Within each facet, I will explain how Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) play a role in understanding the systems.

Combinatorial optimization problems are ubiquitous in diverse mathemati- cal applications. The desire to understand their "typical" behavior motivates a study of these problems on random instances. In spite of a long and rich history, many natural questions in this domain are still intractable to rigorous mathematical analysis. Graph cut problems such as Max-Cut and Min-bisection are canonical examples in this class. On the other hand, physicists study these questions using the non-rigorous "replica" and "cavity" methods, and predict complex, intriguing features. In this talk, I will describe some recent progress in our understanding of their typical properties on random graphs, obtained via connections to the theory of mean-field spin glasses. The new techniques are broadly applicable, and lead to novel algorithmic and statistical consequences.

Richard Borcherds won the Fields medal in 1998 for his proof of the Monstrous Moonshine Conjecture. Loosely speaking, the conjecture asserts that the representation theory of the Monster, the largest sporadic finite simple group, is dictated by the Fourier expansions of a distinguished set of modular functions. This conjecture arose from astonishing coincidences noticed by finite group theorists and arithmetic geometers in the 1970s. Recently, mathematical physicists have revisited moonshine, and they discovered evidence of undiscovered moonshine which some believe will have applications to string theory and 3d quantum gravity. The speaker and his collaborators have been developing the mathematical facets of this theory, and have proved the conjectures which have been formulated. These results include a proof of the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture, and Moonshine for the first sporadic finite simple group which does not occur as a subgroup or subquotient of the Monster. The most recent Moonshine (announced here) yields unexpected applications to the arithmetic elliptic curves thanks to theorems related to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture and the Main Conjectures of Iwasawa theory for modular forms. This is joint work with John Duncan, Michael Griffin and Michael Mertens.

The Kronecker coefficient $g_{\lambda \mu \nu}$ is the multiplicity of an irreducible $\mathcal{S}_n$-module $M_\nu$ in the tensor product $M_\lambda \otimes M_\mu$. A fundamental open problem in algebraic combinatorics is to find a positive combinatorial formula for these coefficients. We give such a formula in the case that one of the partitions is a hook shape. Our main tool is Haiman's mixed insertion, which is a generalization of Schensted insertion to colored words. Prior familiarity with combinatorics of words and tableaux will not be assumed.

Modern material sciences focus on studies on the microscopic scale. This calls for mathematical understanding of electronic structure and atomistic models, and also their connections to continuum theories. In this talk, we will discuss some recent works where we develop and generalize ideas and tools from mathematical analysis of continuum theories to these microscopic models. We will focus on macroscopic limit and microstructure pattern formation of electronic structure models.

I will present a second order accurate, geometrically flexible and easy to implement method for solving the variable coefficient Poisson equation with interfacial discontinuities on an irregular domain. We discretize the equations using an embedded approach on a uniform Cartesian grid employing virtual nodes at interfaces and boundaries. A variational method is used to define numerical stencils near these special virtual nodes and a Lagrange multiplier approach is used to enforce jump conditions and Dirichlet boundary conditions. Our combination of these two aspects yields a symmetric positive definite discretization. In the general case, we obtain the standard 5-point stencil away from the interface. For the specific case of interface problems with continuous coefficients, we present a discontinuity removal technique that admits use of the standard 5-point finite difference stencil everywhere in the domain. Numerical experiments indicate second order accuracy in L-infinity.