Coherent configurations" (CCs) are certain highly regular colorings of the directed complete graph. The concept goes back to Schur (1933) who used it to study permutation groups, and has subsequently been rediscovered in other contexts (block designs, association schemes, graph canonization). CCs are the central concept in the "Split-or-Johnson" (SoJ) procedure, one of the main combinatorial components of the speaker's recent algorithm to test graph isomorphism.

I will give introduction to sofic groups and discuss a possible strategy towards finding a non-sofic group. I will show that if the Higman group were sofic, there would be a map from Z/pZ to itself, locally like an exponential map, satisfying a rather strong recurrence property. The approach to (non)-soficity is based on the study of sofic representations of amenable subgroups of a sofic group. This is joint work with Harald Helfgott.

Abstract: The original construction uses the theory of pseudo-holomorphic curves. In this lecture, I will describe an explicit combinatorial algorithm for computing knot Floer homology in terms of grid diagrams. In this lecture, I will describe joint work with Ciprian Manolescu, Sucharit Sarkar, Zoltan Szabo, and Dylan Thurston.

We ask whether every homologically trivial cyclic action on a symplectic four-manifold extend to a Hamiltonian circle action. By a cyclic action we mean an action of a cyclic group of finite order; it is homologically trivial if it induces the identity map on homology. We assume that the manifold is closed and connected. In the talk, I will give an example of a homologically trivial symplectic cyclic action on a four-manifold that admits Hamiltonian circle actions, and show that is does not extend to a Hamiltonian circle action.

Abstract: Derived algebraic geometry is a nonlinear analogue of homological algebra, in which one keeps track of syzygies among the relations among the defining equations of a variety, and higher analogues. It has important applications to intersection theory and enumerative geometry.

Abstract: Let \Sigma be a compact connected oriented 2-manifold of genus g , and let p be a point on \Sigma. We define a space S_g(t) consisting of certain irreducible representations of the fundamental group of \Sigma - { p } , modulo conjugation by SU(N).

Knot Floer homology is an invariant for knots in the three-sphere defined using methods from symplectic geometry. I will describe a new algebraic formulation of this invariant which leads to a reasonably efficient computation of these invariants. This is joint work with Zoltan Szabo.

Abstract: Bordered Floer homology is an invariant for three-manifolds with boundary, defined in collaboration with Robert Lipshitz and Dylan Thurston. The invariant associates a DG algebra to a parameterized surface, and a module over that algebra to a three-manifold with boundary. I will explain how methods from bordered Floer homology can be used to give a tidy description of knot Floer homology. This is joint work with Zoltan Szabo.

Abstract:

Title: Equidistribution of expanding translates of curves in homogeneous spaces and Diophantine approximation. Abstract: We consider an analytic curve $\varphi: I \rightarrow \mathbb{M}(n\times m, \mathbb{R}) \hookrightarrow \mathrm{SL}(n+m, \mathbb{R})$ and embed it into some homogeneous space $G/\Gamma$, and translate it via some diagonal flow