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SUMMARY:CMSA Mathematics and Biology II: Mathematics and Science of Behavior
DESCRIPTION:Mathematics and Biology II: Mathematics and Science of Behavior\n\nApril 27\, 2026 @ 9:00 am – May 1\, 2026 @ 5:00 pm\n\n\n\nMathematics and Biology II: Mathematics and Science of Behavior \nDates: April 27 –May 1\, 2026 \nLocation: Harvard CMSA\, Room G10\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge MA \n\n\nThis meeting will explore the emerging mathematics and science of embodied cognition—the idea that behavior arises not solely from the brain but through the dynamic interaction of brain\, body\, and environment. Understanding how animals sense\, move\, decide\, and coordinate\, from individual sensorimotor loops to collective dynamics\, demands mathematical frameworks that integrate geometry\, dynamics\, stochastic processes\, control theory\, and multiscale physics. The meeting will bring together experimentalists studying behavior across species with theorists and engineers building mathematical models and bio-inspired machines\, to identify shared principles of adaptive behavior. \n\n\nCo-organizers: L. Mahadevan (Harvard)\, Francesco Mori (Harvard CMSA)\, Venkatesh Murthy (Harvard) \nDetails TBA \n\n\n\n\nSee the CMSA website for more details.
URL:https://www.math.harvard.edu/event/mathematics-and-biology-ii-cognition-neuroscience-psychology-and-geometry/
LOCATION:CMSA\, 20 Garden St\, G10\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:CMSA EVENTS
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260427T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260427T160000
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CREATED:20260415T140538Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260420T142431Z
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SUMMARY:Higher current algebras and chiral algebras
DESCRIPTION:Vertex algebras capture physicists’ notion of OPEs in chiral CFTs\, in complex dimension one. For various motivations\, one would like to have analogs of vertex algebras in higher dimensions. Chiral algebras\, in the sense of Beilinson-Drinfeld and Francis-Gaitsgory\, provide a natural framework here\, because they re-express the vertex algebra axioms (which are rather sui generis\, and therefore hard to generalize) as something more recognizable (a chiral algebra is a Lie algebra\, of a sort). \nI will review this\, and then go on to introduce a certain concrete model of the unit chiral algebra in higher dimensions. In higher dimensions one is forced to work up to coherent homotopy in some fashion; in this model it turns out to be in the mildest fashion one could hope for: namely\, one moves from Lie algebras to their homotopy analogs\, L-infinity algebras\, and from chiral algebras to homotopy chiral algebras in a sense introduced by Malikov-Schechtman. \nThe main tool in the talk will be a strict cdga model — the polysimplicial model — of derived global sections of the structure sheaf on configuration space. The hope is that this model will prove well-adapted to doing concrete calculations\, and in that direction\, I will gesture towards a homotopy version of the usual Arnold/Orlik-Solomon relations for broken circuits. \nThis is joint work with Zhengping Gui and Laura Felder and is based largely on the preprint 2506.09728 \nIn person and online: \n\nZoom link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/98290689769\nPassword: CMSA-QFTPM
URL:https://www.math.harvard.edu/event/higher-current-algebras-and-chiral-algebras/
LOCATION:CMSA\, 20 Garden St\, G02\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:CMSA QUANTUM FIELD THEORY AND PHYSICAL MATHEMATICS SEMINAR
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260427T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260427T160000
DTSTAMP:20260427T074505
CREATED:20260421T143202Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260421T143225Z
UID:10003151-1777302000-1777305600@www.math.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:A New Proof of the Existence Conjecture and its Applications to Extremal and Probabilistic Design Theory
DESCRIPTION:We discuss the recently developed method of refined absorption and how it is used to provide a new proof of the Existence Conjecture for combinatorial designs. This method can also be applied to resolve open problems in extremal and probabilistic design theory while providing a unified framework for these problems. Crucially\, the main absorption theorem can be used as a “black-box” in these applications obviating the need to reprove the absorption step for each different setup. Joint work with Michelle Delcourt. \nFor information about the Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics\, visit… https://math.mit.edu/combin/
URL:https://www.math.harvard.edu/event/a-new-proof-of-the-existence-conjecture-and-its-applications-to-extremal-and-probabilistic-design-theory/
LOCATION:MIT Room 2-143
CATEGORIES:HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260427T163000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260427T173000
DTSTAMP:20260427T074505
CREATED:20260420T172718Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260420T172718Z
UID:10003149-1777307400-1777311000@www.math.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Enacted collective cognition: Brainless problem-solving in weaver ants
DESCRIPTION:Unlike most ants\, weaver ants construct their nests by pulling together leaves. Because individual ants are small relative to the leaves\, they assemble their bodies into temporary tools that bend the leaves into a hollow structure\, later stabilized with larval silk. Remarkably\, they achieve functional nests across a wide range of leaf shapes and configurations\, suggesting that this distributed system is capable of solving complex\, open-ended problems. \nTo understand how this is possible\, we performed laboratory experiments using controlled leaf configurations. In simple cases\, we show that ants can rely on a zipping heuristic that produces closed nests\, and we use differential geometry to demonstrate how flexible leaves are transformed into rigid structures. Crucially\, this zipping behavior forms a feedback loop in which ants continuously read and modify the evolving structure. In this sense\, the nest itself functions as a shared physical information system. \nThis suggests that cognition in this system is not located within individual ants\, but is enacted through the co-dynamics of the colony and the structure it builds. We present preliminary experiments with more complex leaf configurations\, showing that this process can solve increasingly challenging construction problems. Together\, these results point to a distributed\, brainless\, and enactive form of cognition. \n 
URL:https://www.math.harvard.edu/event/enacted-collective-cognition-brainless-problem-solving-in-weaver-ants/
LOCATION:CMSA\, 20 Garden St\, G10\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:CMSA COLLOQUIUM
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