Thursday Colloquium

THURSDAYS 3:00 pm to 3:50 pm* in MS 6627/Zoom

The UCLA Mathematics Colloquium, also known as the Thursday Colloquium, is a weekly meeting featuring invited talks on diverse subjects of mathematics. The colloquium takes place usually Thursdays at 3pm and sometimes Thursdays at 4:15pm. Talks last usually around 50 minutes and are followed by questions and discussion. Many of the colloquium sessions are broadcasted live via zoom and recorded for posterity. Faculty, students, and all mathematics enthusiasts are welcome to participate in the colloquium and submit nominations of possible speakers. If you are not part of UCLA, you are still welcome to sign up to the mailing list and join the zoom sessions by following the link below. 

Previous recordings can be found below. 

The UCLA Mathematics Colloquium is supported in part by the Larry M. Weiner Mathematics Fund.

*Time subject to change based on speaker schedule or if multiple speakers are scheduled.

Weekly Calendar
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Upcoming Talks

Thursday, January 29th, 2026

Speaker: Joel Tropp (Caltech)

Title: Positive random walks and positive-semidefinite random matrices

Abstract.

On the real line, a random walk that can only move in the positive direction is very unlikely to remain close to its origin. After a fixed number of steps, the left tail has a Gaussian profile under minimal assumptions. Remarkably, the same phenomenon occurs when we consider a positive random walk on the cone of positive-semidefinite matrices. After a fixed number of steps, the minimum eigenvalue is described by a Gaussian random matrix model.

This talk introduces a new way to make this intuition rigorous. The methodology addresses an open problem in computational mathematics about sparse random embeddings. The presentation is targeted at a general mathematical audience.

Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16578

 
Thursday, February 19th, 2026

Speaker: Konstantin Mischaikow (Rutgers)

Title: Homological Dynamics

Abstract. The study of nonlinear dynamics is an extremely beautiful rich mathematical subject. However, I will argue that in an era of data driven science classical approaches to dynamics can lead to goals that are not attainable. I will describe a complementary approach called homological dynamics that is based on order theory and homological algebra. I will argue that this approach allows one to recover many of the fundamental concepts from classical dynamics using finite data and mild assumptions. The focus will be on the philosophy and expressed via simple examples. I will also discuss how dynamics described using the language of homological dynamics can be recovered from sufficient finite data with sufficient computational effort..

Past Colloquiums