Speaker Series
SUMO hosts regular talks by professors, grad students, or visitors in the mathematics department. The purpose of this series is to expose undergraduates to topics beyond the standard curriculum, as well as to introduce them to Stanford's faculty and community. Talks are generally accessible to students in the 50-series.
Interested in giving a talk? Email us at [stanfordugradmath at gmail.com].
Past Speaker Events
2019-2020 |
2021-2022 |
2022-2023 |
2023-2024 |
2024-2025 |
2025-2026 |
2026-2027 |
2025–2026 Schedule
Fall 2025
| Date |
Speaker |
Title |
Abstract |
Media |
| Date |
Speaker |
Talk Title |
Abstract |
Media |
| October 10 |
Rawley Harrison |
Elliptic Curves, Moduli Spaces, and a Modular form |
This title, designed to be (perhaps excessively) eye-catching, comprises three topics of great mathematical significance, each of which play key roles in important problems of modern mathematics. While understanding any one of them to a significant degree would take at least an entire course, let alone one lecture, in this talk, I will attempt to scratch the tip of these three icebergs at once! In this talk, I will give a (relatively) elementary introduction to the three topics in a remarkable place where they intersect: the moduli space of elliptic curves over C. I will first give a brief introduction to elliptic curves, some of their key properties, and then construct said moduli space. |
Poster |
| October 17 |
Rafe Mazzeo |
Spectral Geometry and Other Inverse Problems |
Many problems, both in the "real world" and in pure mathematics, ask whether one can obtain information about an object, e.g. its geometry or other structure, by sensing it with indirect measurements. Examples go all the way from practical applications like earthquake detection and medical imaging to problems such as whether one can hear the shape of a drum, or read off the full geometry of a shape from more primitive geometric data. There is now a coherent mathematical field that embraces many of these questions, and I will describe a few interesting settings. |
Poster |
| November 21 |
Zehan Hu |
Knot Theory and the Jones Polynomial |
Knots and links provide some of the most visual and intuitive objects in topology. They are everywhere: in shoelaces and on your Stanford math t-shirt. This talk introduces the Jones polynomial, an invariant that assigns to every knot a polynomial capturing subtle information. We will discuss how the Jones polynomials are computed and how they can tell knots and links apart from one another. No background in topology will be assumed. |
|
Winter 2026
| Date |
Speaker |
Title |
Abstract |
Media |
| Date |
Speaker |
Talk Title |
Abstract |
Media |
| January 16 |
Brian Conrad and Tadashi Tokieda |
Ask Us Anything! |
Pfs. Conrad and Tokieda will answer any math queries (modulo personal and homework questions) you have. This is your chance to ask about those theorems, conjectures, examples, and histories for which you’ve always had unanswered questions... The discussion will be moderated mostly around undergraduate-level mathematics, although all are welcome to attend! |
Poster |
| February 13 |
Jae Hee Lee |
Rainbows and Walls |
There is one story that I am likely banned from discussing in MATH 53, surrounding the theory of linear differential equations. In that class, we never discuss differential equations with poles, but beyond the analytic assumption lies a "wild" story featuring diverging series, exponentially small errors, and abrupt jumps of approximations. I'll give an introduction to this strange "Stokes phenomenon" through an example. |
|
| March 6 |
Deangelo Brasen |
Forcing Schrödinger |
Quantum mechanics has always been treated as "illogical," as some concept that violates all observable physical intuition. In this talk, I’ll motivate the theory of quantum mechanics by shedding light on its mathematical foundations (for instance, explaining what an operator really is, and why we always use Hilbert spaces). We’ll discuss the origin of the Schrödinger equation, and the physical reasoning which compels it to hold. In particular, we’ll focus on ideas that go unrealized in "conventional" quantum classes, but reveal deeper intuition about mechanics and our world. |
|
Spring 2026
| Date |
Speaker |
Title |
Abstract |
Media |
| Date |
Speaker |
Talk Title |
Abstract |
Media |
| April 17 |
Otis Chodosh |
What is the best shape? |
I will discuss the isoperimetric problem (which shape encloses the most volume for fixed area) and some related problems in geometry. |
Poster |
| May 8 |
András Vasy |
Inverting the X-ray Transform |
Suppose that F is a function on Rn and that you know the integral of F on straight lines. Can you figure out what F is? A practical application is the CT-scan. What if the lines are replaced by curves? This is related to seismic wave propagation through the interior of the Earth. I will discuss these questions and related ones. |
|
| May 29 |
Sarah Peluse |
Random Partitions and Mysteries of Character Tables of Symmetric Groups |
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