2011 PRIMES Conference

9:00 am: Welcoming Remarks

• Prof. Michael Sipser, Chair of the MIT Mathematics Department
• Prof. Pavel Etingof, PRIMES Chief Research Advisor
• Dr. Slava Gerovitch, PRIMES Program Director

9:15 am: Session 1. Dynamic Combinatorics and Geometry

• Xiaoyu He, "Rotor-Routers" (mentor Dr. Tanya Khovanova) ( slides )
• Ziv Scully, "Progress on the parallel chip-firing problem" (mentor Yan Zhang) ( slides )
• Christina Chen, "Hiding behind and hiding inside" (mentor Dr. Tanya Khovanova) ( slides )

10:15 am:

• Coffee break

10:30 am: Session 2. Combinatorics and Number Theory

• Aaron Klein, "Counting matrices with restricted positions by rank over finite fields" (mentor Alejandro Morales) ( slides )
• Caroline Ellison, "Polynomial coefficients over finite fields" (mentor Giorgia Fortuna) ( slides )
• Saarik Kalia, "Fibonacci numbers and continued fractions" (mentor Dr. Tanya Khovanova) ( slides )

11:30 am:

• Coffee break

11:45 am: Session 3. Representation Theory I

• Sheela Devadas and Carl Lian, "Modular representations of Cherednik algebras associated to symmetric groups" (mentor Steven Sam) ( slides )
• Fengning Ding, "Infinitesimal Cherednik algebras" (mentor Sasha Tsymbaliuk) ( slides )

12:30 pm:

• Lunch break

1:45 pm: Session 4. Representation Theory II: Computer Algebra Lab Projects

• Masahiro Namiki, "Determinant formulas for quantum GL(N)" (mentor David Jordan) ( slides )
• Surya Bhupatiraju, William Kuszmaul, and Jason Li, "Lower central series of associative algebras in characteristic p" (mentor David Jordan) ( slides )
• Michael Zhang and Yongyi Chen, "Poisson homology in characteristic p" (mentor David Jordan) ( slides )

2:45 pm:

• Coffee break

3:00 pm: Session 5. Computational Biology

• Dash Elhauge and Andrew Kim, "Modeling the role of cell fusion in cancer development" (mentor Christopher McFarland) ( slides )
• Stephanie Palocz, "Segregation of Ring Polymers: What is the Importance of Entropy in the Bacterial Nucleus" (mentors Geoffrey Fudenberg and Maxim Imakaev) ( slides )
• Sylvia Hürlimann, "The Structure of DNA in E. Coli" (mentors Geoffrey Fudenberg and Maxim Imakaev) ( slides )
• Dong-Gil Shin, "Scaffold Assisted Chromosome Condensation: Molecular Dynamics Simulations" (mentors Geoffrey Fudenberg and Maxim Imakaev) ( slides )
• Campbell Hewett, "Simulating Supercoiling in Prokaryotic DNA" (mentors Geoffrey Fudenberg and Maxim Imakaev) ( slides , video for slide #12 )