Prof. Elisa Gorla will be our next guest in the "John Conway Spirited Mathematics Seminar Series" where she will be giving a presentation on "Multivariate Cryptography and the Complexity of Polynomial Systems Solving" on Monday, September 20, 2021 at 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM. She will talk about multivariate cryptography, introduce Groebner bases and discuss how to compute them. She will also introduce some invariants, which are used to estimate the complexity of computing a Groebner basis. 

About the speaker:

Elisa Gorla is a well-known expert of "Non-Linear Algebras". She did her PhD from University of Notre Dame, IN (USA), in 2004.  During her professional career, she got affiliated with Max Planck Institut fuer Mathematik - Bonn (Germany), Fields Institute, Toronto (Canada), University of Zuerich (Switzerland) under various role.  Currently, she is working as a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. She is an Associate Editor in the SIAM Journal of Applied Algebra and Geometry. During the period 2013-2019 she was a member of the management team of CIMPA (International Centre for Pure and Applied Mathematics), a non-profit international organization whose aim is promoting international cooperation in higher education and research in mathematics for the benefit of developing countries. 

Please join us virtually via zoom: 

Zoom Meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/97379855766    

Meeting ID: 973 7985 5766; Passcode: 146928   

Date: September 13, 2021
Time: 4:00 pm (PKT)
Link: https://zoom.us/j/97379855766
Meeting ID: 973 7985 5766
Passcode: 146928

Professor Emanuel Carneiro (ICTP, Italy) will be speaking about “Fourier meets Riemann: Some Problems on the Interface between Analysis and Number Theory” in the next John Conway Spirited Seminar Series on September 6th, 2021, at 6pm PST. The seminar is organized by the Department of Mathematics at SBASSE LUMS.

Individuals interested in being part of the seminar can join via Zoom Meeting ID: 97379855766

Centre for Water Informatics & Technology at LUMS is pleased to announce the next talk of the "Best of Water Systems Research" seminar series. The talk will be delivered by Dr. Ariel Dinar of UC Riverside and is titled "Dealing with Water Scarcity and Salinity: Adoption of Water Efficient Technologies and Management Practices by California Avocado Growers". 

About the speaker: Dr. Ariel Dinar is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy at the School of Public Policy, University of California, Riverside (UCR). His work addresses various aspects of economic and strategic behavior associated with management of water, land and the environment. Dr. Dinar received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since then he spent 15 years in the World Bank working on water and climate change economics and policy. In 2008, Dr. Dinar assumed a professorship at UCR. Dr. Dinar founded the Water Science and Policy Center, which he directed until 2014. Dr. Dinar is an International Fellow of the Center for Agricultural Economic Research of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel since November 2010; a Fulbright Senior Specialist since 2003; and was named a 2015 Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He authored and co-authored nearly 250 publications in peer reviewed journals, policy outlets and book chapters. He co-authored and edited 29 books and textbooks. He founded two technical journals (Strategic Behavior and the Environment, and Water Economics and Policy) for the latter one he serves at present as an Editor-in-Chief. He founded and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the book series Global Issues in Water Policy.    
 
About the seminar series: The “Best of Water Systems Research” is a webinar series initiated by The Center for Water Informatics & Technology at LUMS. While our companion webcast series “Aab Beeti” is geared towards generating public awareness and meeting leading practitioners and opinion makers in Pakistan’s water sector, this new series (BWSR) is primarily meant for discussing serious scholarship on water resources. The series celebrates distinguished works in water systems research and is aimed towards researchers, practitioners, and technical experts in water-related areas. The list of speakers majorly consists of individuals who regularly deploy quantitative data-driven methods & systems thinking and have earned recognition via peer-reviewed research in top journals. Also, many of the speakers may or may not have a direct interest in the Indus or South Asia’s other basins.

The talks are (mostly) delivered bi-weekly on Wednesday evenings. A tentative schedule for the webinars can be found at https://wit.lums.edu.pk/BWSR2021 which also includes recordings of past sessions and information on future speakers.

A link for attending will be sent via email to registered individuals. Colleagues who register once can attend all future talks without the need to register again.
 

The Centre for Water Informatics & Technology at SBASSE, LUMS is extremely excited to announce the launch of a webinar series intended to celebrate distinguished works in ‘Water Systems Research’. The seminars will be targeted towards researchers and technical experts working in water resource systems and will be delivered by scientists who have produced acclaimed research in the field. Securing the future of our water resources is becoming less of a problem of scarcity and more of a problem of effective management of what we already have. We strongly believe that this can be achieved only by adopting a systems perspective on water that takes into account the intricate linkages connecting the water system with food, energy, technology, and society. 'Best of Water Systems Research' is aimed at propagating the science and techniques of exactly this approach to sustain our water resources. In this series, WIT will be inviting top researchers who have applied systems theoretic methods to address real problems in water resource management.

The first talk will be delivered by Dr. Andrew Bell from Boston University on his work on participatory irrigation management in Punjab, Pakistan. Other confirmed speakers include Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan from UIUC, Dr. Ariel Dinar from UC Riverside, Dr. Grey Nearing from UC Davis, and Dr. Michael Mitchell from CSU Australia. Many other esteemed researchers are (and will be) invited and we are very excited to be able to learn collectively from their wealth of experiences. 

The talks will (mostly) be delivered bi-weekly on Wednesday evenings. A tentative schedule for the webinars can be found at here, while you can register here. The webinars will be streamed via zoom with the opportunity to interact with speakers during the Q&A after the presentation ends. A link for attending will be sent via email to registered individuals. Colleagues who register once can attend all future talks without the need to register again. 

The first talk will be delivered by Dr. Andrew Bell from Boston University and is titled: "Finding the next steps forward for IBIS water governance". The talk is scheduled for 6:00-7:00 pm PKT on Wednesday, July 28, 2021 and will be moderated by Dr. Talha Manzoor, Assistant Professor, Center for Water Informatics & Technology. 

About the speaker: Andrew Bell studies livelihoods and resource decision-making. including domains of irrigation, pest management, ecosystem services, technology adoption and migration. Most of his work applies survey and experimental tools (games, high-frequency smart-phone based surveys) to identify and model behaviour; and agent-based models to understand what these behaviours imply for system-level outcomes under scenarios of environmental change. He received his PhD (2010) in Natural Resource Management from the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE, now SEAS), also MASc in Environmental Engineering from Waseda University and BASc in Environmental Engineering from the University of Waterloo. 

For more details and queries, contact Soban Hameed Saigol from WIT at soban.hameed@lums.edu.pk.

A workshop on the topic of “Mathematical Introduction to Reinforcement Learning” was organized by the Department of Mathematics, SBASSE from June 9th to 11th 2021.

The esteemed speakers of the workshop were: Dr. Andreas Daniel Matt from IMAGINARY, Berlin, Germany; and Dr. Jonathan Shock from University of Cape Town, South Africa.

The workshop was attended by national and international students, researchers and professionals. The fact that the event used theory mixed with simulators and interactive applets to introduce Reinforcement Learning (RL), every individual could relate RL to their own context. The discussion and ideas stemmed from various exciting areas of applications such as the use of RL in automating investment portfolios, flight/boat navigation, logistics and transport routing, etc. The event was a first of its kind to open an interactive floor for people to meet and talk about RL, and the future of RL.  

Selected participants will be working closely with some faculty members of the Department of Mathematics at SBASSE. The event has paved way for mathematicians to work with engineers, programmers, and skilled professionals. The event highlighted the needs of incorporating Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning into the future activities of Pakistan, especially in teaching, research, business, and IT sectors. 

Prof. Mani Mehra (IIT, New Delhi) is going to be our distinguished guest speaker in John Conway Spirited Mathematics Seminar Series. Prof.  Mani Mehra has her research interests in wavelet methods for PDEs and numerical methods.  

She will talk on ‘Extension of wavelets to topologically complicated domains’ where she discusses how wavelets could be extended to networks to solve partial differential equations on network--like structures using spectral graph wavelet.  

 Please join us virtually via zoom.  

 Zoom Meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/97379855766   

 Meeting ID: 973 7985 5766; Passcode: 146928  

For details on the complete seminar series please follow the link below:

https://sites.google.com/view/conway-spirited-math-seminars/home      

Prof. Rached Mneimné is our next speaker in the upcoming seminar of the John Conway Spirited Mathematics Seminar Series. He will talk about case of the irreducible polynomial X6-2 to unveil mysteries of Galois Correspondence. Prof. Rached Mneimné has his research interests in Non-Commutative Harmonic Analysis in Semi-Simple Lie Groups and their Homogeneous Spaces, and Representation Theory of Lie algebras. He has also authored books for graduate and undergraduate students mixing Higher Linear Algebra to Finite Groups and Analytic Geometry. 

Please join us virtually via zoom:

Zoom Meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/97379855766   

Meeting ID: 973 7985 5766; Passcode: 146928  

The complete range of seminars in this series can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/view/conway-spirited-math-seminars/home     

The central topic of the school is the mutual interaction of algebra, combinatorics, and geometry. Objects of research in algebraic geometry are affine as well as projective varieties and their associated invariants which can be studied using methods from algebra and combinatorics. Toric and tropical varieties are instances where such kind of approaches were and still are very successful. In discrete geometry cones, graphs, hyperplane arrangements and matroids are examples of research subjects which naturally play prominent roles in algebra and discrete mathematics. The main goal of this school is to build bridges between various disciplines of mathematics which have in common to apply algebraic and combinatorial methods in geometry. The lectures range from the foundations to recent results and applications of the relevant theory. 

Following speakers will represent the school:

• Sara Faridi, Dalhousie University, Halifax NS, Canada
• Sara Saeedi Madani, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran &Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Iran
• Tai Huy Ha, Tulane University, New Orleans, USA
• Hannah Markwig, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
• Tim Römer, Universität Osnabrück, Germany
• Kaie Kubjas, Aalto University, Aalto Finland 
• Nguyen Dang Hop, Hanoi Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam
• Shaheen Nazir, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore

Scientific Committee:

• Marc Chardin, Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu , France
• Tim Römer, Universität Osnabrück, Germany
• Hannah Markwig, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
• Sara Faridi, Dalhousie University, Halifax NS, Canada
• Imran Anwar, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore

Organizing Committee:

• Imran Anwar, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore
• Imran Qureshi, KFUPM, KSA
• Afshan Sadiq, ASSMS, Lahore
• Shaheen Nazir, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore

The deadline for all applications to attend the school, get funding and proposing a talk or a poster is November 19, 2021.

Local participants from Pakistan can apply here.

For funding and registration of international participants click here.

Important links:

Accommodation Gallery CIMPA School Webpage

We are pleased to welcome our guest speaker Prof. Jan Draisma from the University of Bern, Switzerland, to talk about ‘Infinite-Dimensional Geometry’ in our upcoming seminar on Monday March 29, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST via zoom in J. Conway Spirited Mathematics Seminar Series. Prof. Jan Draisma has his research interests concerning the interplay between combinatorics, statistics, and algebraic geometry.      

He discusses the problem of the breakdown of most theorems in finite-dimensional algebraic geometry in infinite dimensions. His talk highlights that some finite-dimensional algebraic geometry theorems & results survive when a sufficiently large symmetry group is imposed along with some examples. His presentation includes some applications to algebraic statistics, tensor decomposition, algebraic combinatorics.  

Please join us virtually via zoom. 

Zoom Meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/97379855766  

Meeting ID: 973 7985 5766; Passcode: 146928 

The rest of the talks from this series can be accessed here:

https://sites.google.com/view/conway-spirited-math-seminars/home