Seminar: "Paradigm shifts through Applied Topology" by Prof. Dmitry Feichtner-Kozlov

This seminar is open only to the OIST community.

Speaker:

Dr. Dmitry Feichtner-Kozlov

Mathematics and Computer Science

University of Bremen (Bremen, Germany)

Abstract

In this talk we shall survey several instances of paradigm shifts caused by Applied Topology.

In the first part we will see how Topology can be applied to questions in Discrete Mathematics.
Specifically, we will see how Stiefel-Whitney characteristic classes can be used to prove bounds for chromatic numbers of graphs.

In the second part we will talk about how simplicial methods can be used to gain better understanding of questions in Theoretical Distributed Computing.

We will finish with remarks on the emerging field of Quantative Topology, where simplicial structure, having played a subordinate role until now, takes center stage.

Biography

Dmitry Feichtner-Kozlov obtained Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm in 1996.

In 2004, after longer stays at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the University of Washington Seattle, University of Bern, and the Royal Institute of Technology, he assumed the position of Assistant Professor at ETH
Zurich, Switzerland.  

Since 2007 he works at the University of Bremen, Germany, where he holds the Chair of Algebra and Geometry, and is the director of the Institute for Algebra, Geometry, Topology and their applications.

Dmitry Feichtner-Kozlov is the recipient of the following prizes:
Wallenberg prize 2003, Goran Gustafsson prize 2004, European Prize in Combinatorics 2005.
The book "Distributed Computing through Combinatorial Topology" has been selected as a Notable Book on Best of Computing 2013 list by the Association for Computing Machinery.

He is currently a managing editor of the Journal of Applied and Computational Topology, published by Springer-Verlag.