Past Events

‘Reef halos’ are rings of sand, barren of vegetation, encircling reefs. However, the extent to which various biotic (e.g., herbivory) and abiotic (e.g., temperature, nutrients) factors drive changes in halo prevalence and size remains unclear. The...

In this talk we will introduce the modular method, the approach followed by Wiles to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. We will explain the role of elliptic curves, modular forms, and Galois representations in this framework, and discuss how the method has...

Fix a positive integer n and a graph F . A graph G with n vertices is called F -saturated if G contains no subgraph isomorphic to F but each graph obtained from G by joining a pair of nonadjacent vertices contains at least one copy of F as a subgraph...

The fact that |z|.|w| = |zw| for complex numbers z and w leads to a "sums of squares identity of type (2,2,2)", namely [x1^2 + x2^2] [y1^2 + y2^2] = [x1y1 - x2y2]^2 + [x1y2 + x2y1]^2. Similarly, quaternion and octonion numbers lead to analogous...

Students of grades 5 to 7 are invited to challenge and develop their thinking and creativity skills at the Math Circle Workshops. This is an enrichment program for students organized by the faculty members of the Department of Mathematics at the...

Oilsands tailings ponds are waste reservoirs where bioavailable organic materialcan be largely converted into methane. This methane is produced by activemethanogenic and bacterial communities capable of surviving even undernutrient-poor conditions...

The West Coast Optimization Meeting will take place on October 18, 2025 on the Okanagan Campus of the University of British Columbia. The organizers (Aleksandr Aravkin Warren Hare, Tim Hoheisel, Yves Lucet, and Amy Wiebe) are pleased to invite all...

There are many synergies between probability theory and convex geometry, especially in high-dimensional settings. We discuss some classical examples and then focus on a recent development concerning a famous theorem of von Neumann, which establishes...

A set $A\subset\mathbb{Z}$ tiles the integers by translations if there is a set $T\subset\mathbb{Z}$ such that every integer $n\in\mathbb{Z}$ has a unique representation $n=a+t$ with $a\in A$ and $t\in T$. It is well known that the translation set in...

Glass Klein bottles? Sure! How about knots and knot-compliments? A Boys Surface? Plenty of topological manifolds work well in glass. With good fortune, SFU's glass-blower, Lucas Clarke, will demonstrate his art in making mathematical manifolds in...