Abstract:
In 1934, Loewner proved a remarkable and deep theorem about matrix monotone functions. Recently, the young Finnish mathematician, Otte Heinävarra settled a 10 year old conjecture and found a 2 page proof of a theorem in Loewner theory whose only prior proof was 35 pages. I will describe his proof and use that as an excuse to discuss matrix monotone and matrix convex functions including, if time allows, my own recent proof of Loewner’s original theorem.

Symbolic dynamics is a tool that simplifies the study of dynamical systems in various aspects. It is known for almost fifty years that uniformly hyperbolic systems have ``good'' codings. For non-uniformly hyperbolic systems, Sarig constructed in 2013 ``good'' codings for surface diffeomorphisms. In this talk we will discuss some recent developments on Sarig's theory, when the map has discountinuities and/or critical points, such as multimodal maps of the interval and Bunimovich billiards.

Let X be a stationary Z^d-process. We say that X is a factor of an i.i.d. process if there is a (deterministic and translation-invariant) way to construct a realization of X from i.i.d. variables associated to the sites of Z^d. That is, if there is an i.i.d. process Y and a measurable map F from the underlying space of Y to that of X, which commutes with translations of Z^d and satisfies that F(Y)=X in distribution. Such a factor is called finitary if, in order to determine the value of X at a given site, one only needs to look at a finite (but random) region of Y.

Abstract: In this talk, we will discuss the notion of small extensions in its various incarnations, from torsors under abelian groups to square-zero extensions of algebras. We will then focus on the somewhat less familiar case of small extensions of ∞-categories. Our main goal is to make this abstract concept concrete and intuitive through a variety of examples. In particular, we will advocate the point of view that small extensions of  ∞-categories offer a unifying perspective in understanding many constructions appearing in obstruction, classification, and deformation theoretic problems

Sela proved that the theory of free groups is stable. It is thus natural to wonder what the independence relation looks like. Together with Sklinos, we worked out a complete characterization of forking independence in the standard model (over any set of parameters) in terms of an algebraic-geometric object called the JSJ decomposition, which encodes all the splittings of the group as an amalgamated product or an HNN extension relative to the parameter set.
In the talk we will try to give an idea of the proof over some examples.

A special class among the countably infinite relational structures is the class of homogeneous structures. These are the structures where every finite partial isomorphism extends to a total automorphism. A countable set, the ordered rationals, and the random graph are all homogeneous.

We isolate the property of being a critical point, and prove some basic positive
properties of them. We will also prove a lifting property that allows lifting
elementary embedding to symmetric extensions, and outline a construction that
shows that it is consistent that a successor of a critical cardinal is singular.
This is a recent work with Yair Hayut.

Abstract: The notion of an ascent path through a tree, isolated by Laver, is a generalization of the notion of a cofinal branch and, in many cases, the existence of an ascent path through a tree provides a concrete obstruction to the tree being special. We will discuss some recent results regarding ascent paths through kappa-trees, where kappa > omega_1 is a regular cardinal. We will discuss the consistency of the existence or non-existence of a special mu^+-tree with a cf(mu)-ascent path, where mu is a singular cardinal.

We will take a close look at the first few steps of the construction of the Bristol model, which is a model intermediate to L[c], for a Cohen real c, satisfying V
eq L(x) for all x.

We will follow a short note by Artem Chernikov & Sergei Starchenko: "A note on the Erdos-Hajnal Conjecture."
“In this short note we provide a relatively simple proof of the Erd ̋os–Hajnal conjecture for families of finite (hyper-)graphs without the m-order property. It was originally proved by M. Malliaris and S. Shelah”