The genealogy process is typically the most time-consuming part of -- and a limiting factor in the success of -- forensic investigative genetic genealogy, which is a new approach to solving violent crimes and identifying human remains. We formulate a stochastic dynamic program that -- given the list of matches and their genetic distances to the unknown target -- chooses the best decision at each point in time: which match to investigate (i.e., find its ancestors), which ancestors of these matches to descend from (i.e., find its descendants), or whether to terminate the investigation. The objective is to maximize the probability of finding the target minus a cost on the expected size of the final family tree. We estimate the  parameters of our model using data from 17 cases (eight solved, nine unsolved) from the DNA Doe Project. We assess the Proposed Strategy using simulated versions of the 17 DNA Doe Project cases, and compare it to a Benchmark Strategy that ranks matches by their genetic distance to the target and only descends from known common ancestors between a pair of matches. The Proposed Strategy solves cases 25-fold faster than the Benchmark Strategy, and does so by aggressively descending from a set of potential most recent common ancestors between the target and a match even when this set has a low probability of containing the correct most recent common ancestor.

This lecture is jointly sponsored by the UCSD Rady School of Management and the UCSD Mathematics Department.

The MPR2 conference room is just off Ridge Walk. It is on the same level as Ridge Walk. You will see the glass-walled MPR2 conference room on your left as you come into the Rady School area. 

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The plate bending or Babuska paradox refers to the failure of convergence when a linear bending problem with simple support boundary conditions is approximated using polygonal domain approximations. We provide an explanation based on a variational viewpoint and identify sufficient conditions that avoid the paradox and which show that boundary conditions have to be suitably modified. We show that the paradox also matters in nonlinear thin-sheet folding problems and devise approximations that correctly converge to the original problem. The results are relevant for the construction of curved folding devices.

Robust statistics answers the question of how to build statistical estimators that behave well even when a small fraction of the input data is badly corrupted. While the information-theoretic underpinnings have been understood for decades, until recently all reasonably accurate estimators in high dimensions were computationally intractable. Recently however, a new class of algorithms has arisen that overcome these difficulties providing efficient and nearly-optimal estimates. Furthermore, many of these techniques can be adapted to cover the case where the majority of the data has been corrupted. These algorithms have surprising applications to clustering problems even in the case where there are no errors.

In this talk, we will present a new software application for publishing interactive math content online. It works like Overleaf, where you type text, LaTeX, and more in your browser, but instead of a PDF it produces a live, interactive website.  This app has now been tested in several math courses at UCSD, and we hope it can support your teaching as well!

The study of enumerative invariants dates back at least as far as Euclid’s work circa 300 BC, who observed that through two distinct points in the plane there is a unique line. In 1849, Cayley-Salmon found that there are 27 lines on a nonsingular cubic surface. In 1879, Schubert found that there are 2875 lines on a generic non-singular quintic threefold; Katz correctly counted 609250 conics in a generic nonsingular quintic threefold in 1986. In 1991, physicists Candelas-de la Ossa-Green-Parkes gave a generating function for genus 0 Gromov-Witten invariants of a generic non-singular quintic threefold by studying the mirror space. This observation represented a change in our approach to enumerative problems by counting rational degree d curves inside of the quintic threefold “all at once;” other landmark achievements in modern enumerative geometry include Kontsevich-Manin’s recursive formula for the number of rational plane curves. From the perspective of homological mirror symmetry, enumerative invariants come from the Hochschild cohomology of the Fukaya category. I’m interested in a different question, which asks what enumerative data can be gleaned from the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves. I’ll share results on giving presentations of derived categories, and if time allows, will describe Kalashnikov’s method to recover Givental’s small J-function and the genus 0 Gromov-Witten potential for CP^1 by viewing it as a toric quiver variety associated to the Kronecker quiver; i.e., from a presentation of the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves.  

Nonlinearly Partitioned Runge--Kutta (NPRK) methods are a newly proposed class of time integration schemes which target differential equations in which different scales, stiffnesses or physics are coupled in a nonlinear way. In this talk, I will provide a broad overview of this new class of methods. First, I will motivate these methods as a nonlinear generalization of classical Runge--Kutta (RK) and Additive Runge--Kutta (ARK) methods. Subsequently, I will discuss order conditions for NPRK methods; we obtain the complete order conditions using an edge-colored rooted tree framework. Interestingly, NPRK methods have nonlinear order conditions which have no classical additive counterpart. We will show how these nonlinear order conditions can be used to obtain embedded estimates of state-dependent nonlinear coupling strength and present a numerical example to demonstrate these embedded estimates. I will then discuss how these methods yield efficient semi-implicit time integration of numerical partial differential equations; numerical examples from radiation hydrodynamics will be presented. Finally, I will discuss our recent work on multirate NPRK methods, which target problems with nonlinearly coupled processes occurring on different timescales. We will discuss properties of these multirate methods such as timescale coupling, stability and efficiency, and conclude with several numerical examples, such as a fast-reaction viscous Burgers’ equation and the thermal radiation diffusion equations.

The continuous random energy model (CREM) is a Gaussian process indexed by a binary tree of depth T, introduced by Derrida and Spohn (1988) and Bovier and Kurkova (2004) as a toy model of a spin glass. In this talk, I will present recent results on hardness thresholds for algorithms that search for low-energy states. I will first discuss the existence of an algorithmic hardness threshold x_*: finding a state of energy lower than -x T is possible in polynomial time if x < x_*, and takes exponential time if x > x_*, with high probability. I will then focus on the transition from polynomial to exponential complexity near the algorithmic hardness threshold, by studying the performance of a certain beam-search algorithm of beam width N depending on T — we believe this algorithm to be natural and asymptotically optimal. The algorithm turns out to be essentially equivalent to the time-inhomogeneous version of the so-called N-particle branching Brownian motion (N-BBM), which has seen a lot of interest in the last two decades. Studying the performance of the algorithm then amounts to investigating the maximal displacement at time T of the time-inhomogeneous N-BBM. In doing so, we are able to quantify precisely the nature of the transition from polynomial to exponential complexity, proving that the transition happens when the log-complexity is of the order of the cube root of T. This result appears to be the first of its kind and we believe this phenomenon to be universal in a certain sense.

We show that the Bergman metric on ball quotients $\mathbb{B}^2/\Gamma$ is Kähler-Einstein if and only if $\Gamma$ is trivial, leading to a characterization of the unit ball among certain two-dimensional Stein spaces, confirming a version of Cheng’s conjecture. We also relate the boundary type of two-dimensional Stein spaces to the local algebraic degree of their Bergman kernel, characterizing ball quotients via the local rationality of the Bergman kernel. Finally, we derive the rotational symmetry properties of certain domains in $\mathbb{C}^n$ from the orthogonality of holomorphic monomials in their Bergman spaces.

Let  M  be a smooth real codimension two compact submanifold in a Stein manifold. We will prove the following theorem: Suppose that  M  has two elliptic complex tangents and that CR points are non-minimal. Assume further that  M  is contained in a bounded strongly pseudoconvex domain. Then  M  bounds a unique smoothly up to  M  Levi-flat hypersurface  $\widehat{M}$  that is foliated by Stein hyper-surfaces diffeomorphic to the ball. Moreover,  $\widehat{M}$  is the hull of holomorphy of M . This subject has a long history of investigation dating back to E. Bishop and Harvey-Lawson. I will discuss both the historical context and the techniques used in the proof of the aforementioned theorem.

TBA

I will discuss some recent results about relative entropies in QFT, with particular emphasis on the singular limits of such entropies.

We give an explicit geometric computation of the quantum K rings of symplectic Grassmannians of lines, which are deformations of their Grothendieck rings of vector bundles and refinements of their quantum cohomology rings. We prove that their Schubert structure constants have signs that alternate with codimension (just like in the Grothendieck ring) and vanish for degrees at least 3. We also give closed formulas that characterize the multiplicative structure of these rings. This is based on joint work with V. Benedetti and N. Perrin.

We survey some recent observations and ongoing work motivated by a hope to better understand p-adic K-theory. More specifically, we discuss arithmetic problems—and potential approaches—related to syntomic cohomology in positive and mixed characteristics. At the level of the structure sheaf, syntomic cohomology is an 'intelligent version' of p-adic étale Tate twists at the characteristic and (among other things) provides a motivic filtration on p-adic étale K-theory via the theory of trace invariants.

In his seminal paper, Ozawa demonstrated the solidity property for ${\rm II}_1$ factor arising from Biexact groups. In this talk, I will discuss a relative version of the solidity property for biexact groups in the setting of measure equivalence and its applications to measure equivalence rigidity. This is a joint work with Daniel Drimbe.

Solving linear systems is a crucial subroutine and challenge in the large-scale data setting. In this presentation, we introduce an iterative method for approximating the solution of large-scale multi-linear systems, represented in the form A*X=B under the tensor t-product. Unlike previously proposed randomized iterative strategies, such as the tensor randomized Kaczmarz method (row slice sketching) or the tensor Gauss-Seidel method (column slice sketching), which are natural extensions of their matrix counterparts, our approach delves into a distinct scenario utilizing frontal slice sketching. In particular, we explore a context where frontal slices, such as video frames, arrive sequentially over time, and access to only one frontal slice at any given moment is available. This talk will present our novel approach, shedding light on its applicability and potential benefits in approximating solutions to large-scale multi-linear systems.
 

We consider scalar field theories on the line with Ginzburg-Landau  (double-well) self-interaction potentials. Prime examples include the  $\phi^4$ model and the sine-Gordon model. These models feature simple  examples of topological solitons called kinks. The study of their = asymptotic stability leads to a rich class of problems owing to the  combination of weak dispersion in one space dimension, low power  nonlinearities, and intriguing spectral features of the linearized  operators such as threshold resonances or internal modes.

We present a perturbative proof of the full asymptotic stability of the sine-Gordon kink outside symmetry under small perturbations in weighted Sobolev norms. The strategy of our proof combines a space-time resonances approach based on the distorted Fourier transform to capture modified scattering effects with modulation techniques to take into account the invariance under Lorentz transformations and under spatial translations. A major difficulty is the slow local decay of the radiation term caused by the threshold resonances of the non-selfadjoint linearized matrix operator around the modulated kink. Our analysis hinges on two remarkable null structures that we uncover in the quadratic nonlinearities of the evolution equation for the radiation term as well as of the modulation equations.

The entire framework of our proof, including the systematic development of the distorted Fourier theory, is general and not specific to the sine-Gordon model. We conclude with a discussion of potential applications in the generic setting (no threshold resonances) and with a discussion of the outstanding challenges posed by internal modes such as in the well-known $\phi^4$ model.

This is joint work with Gong Chen (GeorgiaTech).

Starting  with a transient irreducible diffusion process $X^0$ on a locally compact separable metric space $(D, d)$ (for example, absorbing Brownian motion in a snowflake domain), one can construct a canonical symmetric reflected diffusion process $\bar X$ on a completion $D^*$ of $(D, d)$ through the theory of  reflected Dirichlet spaces. The boundary trace process $\check X$ of $X$ on the boundary $\partial D:=D^*\setminus D$ is the reflected diffusion process $\bar X$ time-changed by a smooth measure $\nu$ having full quasi-support on $\partial D$. The Dirichlet form of the trace process $\check X$ is called the trace Dirichlet form. In this talk, I will address the following two fundamental questions:

1) How to characterize the boundary trace Dirichlet space in a concrete way?

2) How does the boundary trace process behave? 

Based on a joint work with Shiping Cao.

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