Seminar on Geometry, Probability, and Computing

by Alperen Ergür @ UTSA, Grigorios Paouris @ TAMU, and Petros Valettas @ Mizzou.

Discrete and convex geometry, algebraic algorithms, randomized numerical analysis, convex optimization, computational geometry, high dimensional probability, computational phase transitions, and complexity theory.

We don't record the talks. This is meant to be a working seminar to facilitate discussions.

The format: First 30 mins will be an introduction that is accessible to students and faculty from math, cs, and engineering. Then we have a 5 mins break. After the break we have a 45 mins seminar talk.

In 2023 we had to take a break due to a combination of constraints on the organizers.

We hope to be back and running in 2024, please stay tuned.

The list of speakers and related documents for Spring 2023 are below.

April 13, Luis Rademacher, UC Davis, The k-set problem: general shapes and random point sets Slides
Wagner's Survey and Erickson's page

April 20, Suhan Zhong, Texas A & M, Distributionally Robust Optimization Slides

April 27, Zehua Lai, U Chicago, Central Limit Theorems for Stochastic Gradient Descent Slides

May 4, Anup Rao, U Washington Seattle, Anti-concentration and Gap-Hamming problem Slides


The list of speakers for Fall 2022 and related documents are below.

Nov 11, Alex Wein, UC Davis, Computational Phases Transitions in Tensor Decomposition Slides

Nov 18, Alexander Barninok, U Michigan Ann Arbor, When a system of quadratic equations has a real solution Slides

Dec 2, Thomas Rothvoβ, U Washington Seattle, The Vector Balancing Constant for Zonotpes Slides

Dec 9, Daniel Dadush, CWI Amsterdam, From approximate to exact integer programming, Slides


The list of speakers on Spring 2022 and related documents are below.

March 17, Kevin Shu, Georgia Tech, Locally PSD Matrices and Hyperbolic Polynomials Slides

March 24, Jun-Ting (Tim) Hsieh, CMU, Algorithmic Thresholds for Refuting Random Polynomials Slides

March 31, Marcus Michelen, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, Anti-concentration of random variables from zero-free regions Slides

April 7, Charilaos Efthymiou, Warwick, Sampling from Gibbs measures on graphs and hypergraphs Notes and Slides

April 14, Jonathan Leake, TU Berlin, Approximate counting via Lorentzian polynomials and entropy optimization Slides

April 21, Levent Dogan, TU Berlin, Polynomial time algorithms in invariant theory for torus actions Slides

April 28, Elias Tsigaridas, Inria-Paris, Sampling from feasible regions of semi-definite programs Slides

May 5, Josue Tonelli Cueto, Inria-Paris, On the complexity of sampling from parametric curves Notes

May 12, Boris Hanin, Princeton, Universality in Random Neural Networks Notes


The list of speakers on Spring 2021 and related documents are below.

Feb 4, Alexander Barvinok, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Title: Testing systems of real quadratic equations for (approximate) solutions Slides

Feb 11, Alperen Ergur, UTSA, Title: Semidefinite Representations of Derivative Relaxations of Spectrahedra (after Parrilo and Saunderson)

Feb 25, Nikhil Srivastava, University of California, Berkeley, Title: The Quantitative Lax Conjecture Notes

March 4, Gennadiy Averkov, Technical University of Brandenburg, Title: Are semidefinite relaxations a silver bullet for polynomial optimization? Slides

March 11, Grigorios Paouris, TAMU, Title: Matching Polytope has exponential extension complexity (after Rothvoβ) Slides

March 18, Jonathan Leake, Technical University of Berlin and LFIAS, Title: Flow polytope volume bounds via polynomial capacity Slides

March 25, Greg Blekherman, Georgia Institute of Technology, Title: Tropicalization in Convex Geometry and Combinatorics Slides

April 8, Rekha Thomas, University of Washington at Seattle, Title: Lifts of Convex Sets Slides

April 15, Jesús Rebollo Beuno, University of Missouri at Columbia, Title: Complexity of Unconditional Convex Bodies (after Rudelson) Notes

April 22, Georgy Scholten, North Carolina State University, Title: Sparse Moments of Univariate Step Functions

April 29, David Papp, North Carolina State University, Title: Sum of Squares Without Semidefinite Programming