Fifteenth Annual Fall-Term PRIMES Conference, October 18-19, 2025

Saturday, October 18

Mathematics

9:00 am: Welcoming Remarks

• Prof. Michel Goemans, Head of the MIT Mathematics Department
• Prof. Pavel Etingof, PRIMES Chief Research Advisor
• Dr. Slava Gerovitch, PRIMES Program Director

9:15-10:15 am: Session 1

• Leo Hong, "Generalizations of Jarnik's theorem via Total Density of Certain Subspaces" (mentor Vasiliy Nekrasov, Brandeis)
• Bryan Zhu, "Dimension Reduction for Smooth Convex Optimization via Color Refinement" (mentor Dr. Ziang Chen)
• Alyssa Yu, "Spatiotemporal Two-Pathogen Dynamics on Metapopulation Networks" (mentor Prof. Laura Schaposnik, University of Illinois Chicago)
• Aiden Jeong, "Bounds on the Distinguishing (Chromatic) Number of Posets" (mentor Yunseo Choi, Princeton)

10:35-11:40 am: Session 2

• Jaewoo Park, "On the Periodic Orbits of Refractive Billiard Systems" (mentor Prof. Maxim Arnold, University of Texas Dallas)
• Jessica Hu and Aryan Raj, "Sparse Inference of Nonlinear Laboratory Earthquake Dynamics" (mentor Shijie Zhang)
• Jonathan Du, "Data-Driven Latent State Estimation and Dynamical System Identification" (mentors Shijie Zhang and Dave Darrow)
• Liam Reddy, "Fast Spectral Approximation of Multi-Valued Functions" (mentor David Darrow)

12:00-1:00 pm: Session 3

• Maggie Shen and Advaith Mopuri, "Exploring Saturn’s Narrow Ringlets with Cassini Radio Science" (mentors Dr. Ryan Maguire, MIT, and Prof. Richard French, Wellesley College)
• Bryan Guo and Brandon Xu, "Unveiling the High-Resolution Structure of Saturn's Rings from Cassini Radio Science Occultations" (mentors Dr. Ryan Maguire, MIT, and Dr. Richard French, Wellesley College)
• Evan Ashoori, Peter Bai, and Hansen Shieh, "Benchmarking Algorithms for the Jones Polynomial" (mentor Dr. Ryan Maguire)

2:00-3:10 pm: Session 4

• Sophia Hou, "Field of Definition of Abelian Surfaces with Maximal Picard Rank" (mentor Dr. Sheela Devadas, University of Maine)
• Kyle Wu, "On Number Fields with Unit Group of a Prescribed Reduction" (mentor Dr. Alexander Petrov)
• Victor Chen, Rohan Garg, and Benny Wang, "Efficient Enumeration of Quadratic Lattices" (mentor Dr. Eran Assaf)
• Michael Middlezong and Lucas Qi, "Computing Orbital Integrals as Local Densities" (mentor Dr. Thomas Rüd)

3:25-4:30 pm: Session 5

• Aaryan Vaishya, "SMT Solvers and their Applications" (mentor Brynmor Chapman)
• Luv Udeshi, "Extending CC0 Circuit Upper Bounds Beyond Symmetric Functions" (mentor Brynmor Chapman)
• Anay Aggarwal, "Automated Discovery of Extremal Unit-Distance Graphs" (mentors Andrew Gritsevskiy, Contramont Research, and Prof. Jesse Geneson, San José State University)
• Vishnu Mangipudi, Ethan Song, and Charles Zhang, "Robust Machine Learning-Enabled Spike Inference in Neuronal Voltage Imaging Data" (mentor Prof. Lu Lu, Yale)

4:45-5:45 pm: Session 6

• Omar Graia, Katrina Liu, and Audrey Wang, "AI-Based Histopathology for Lung Cancer Diagnosis" (mentor Dr. Marly Gotti, Arcus Biosciences)
• Shengtao (Alex) Ding, Jason Yang, and Tarun Rapaka, "Comparative Study of Transformer-Based Embeddings for Topic Coherence" (mentor: Dr. Willy Rodriguez, Torus AI)
• Neil Kolekar, Maiya Qiu, and Richard Wang, "On the distribution of irreducible polynomials with positive integer coefficients" (mentor Dr. Harold Polo, UC Irvine)

6:00-7:00 pm: Session 7

• Bofan Liu, Seabert Mao, and Michael Zhao, "Prime Element Stability in Ring Extensions" (mentors Prof. Jim Coykendall and Jared Kettinger, Clemson University)
• Grant Blitz, Darren Han, and Hengrui Liang, "Maximal Common Divisors in Monoids and Rings" (mentor Dr. Felix Gotti)
• Timothy Chen, Guanjie (Tony) Lu, and Alan Yao, "On Polynomial Evaluation at Algebraic Numbers" (mentor Dr. Felix Gotti)

Sunday, October 19

Mathematics

8:45-10:05 am: Session 8 (in parallel with CS/Bio sessions in the morning)

• Feodor Yevtushenko, "Applications of Graphical Representations of Temperley-Lieb Types" (mentor Son Nguyen)
• Shihan Kanungo, "Pattern Avoidance in Sequences" (mentor Prof. Jesse Geneson, San José State University)
• Amogh Akella, "Diameter Bounds for Friends-and-Strangers Graphs" (mentor Rupert Li, Stanford)
• Kai Lum, "Extremal Structural Results for Feedback Arc Sets and Graph Inversions" (mentor Dr. Nitya Mani)
• Alexander Wang, "Edge bounds on k-visibility hypergraphs" (mentor Prof. Jesse Geneson, San José State University)

10:25-11:40 am: Session 9

• Eddy Li, "On a Curious Observation of the Jones Polynomial and How To Categorify It" (mentor Kenta Suzuki, Princeton)
• Shruti Arun, "On a Quantum Group in Characteristic 2" (mentors Prof. Julia Plavnik and Dr. Héctor Peña Pollastri, Indiana University Bloomington, and Prof. Dirceu Bagio, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
• Amelia Chen, "The Quantum Group Associated with a Pale Block in Odd Characteristic" (mentors Prof. Julia Plavnik and Dr. Héctor Peña Pollastri, Indiana University Bloomington, and Prof. Oscar Francisco Márquez Sosa, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
• Christina Wang, "An Exact Sequence of Hopf Superalgebras Arising from the Endymion Algebra in Odd Characteristic" (mentors Prof. Julia Plavnik and Dr. Héctor Peña Pollastri, Indiana University Bloomington; Prof. Saradia Sturza Della Flora and Prof. Daiana Aparecida Da Silva Flores, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria)
• Lucas Hinds, "Quantum Groups from a Fomin-Kirillov Algebra" (mentors Prof. Julia Plavnik and Dr. Héctor Peña Pollastri, Indiana University Bloomington)

12:00-1:00 pm: Session 10

• Yun (Everett) Guo, "The Center of a Tambara-Yamagami-Like Category" (mentors Prof. Monique Müller, Indiana University Bloomington/Federal University of São João del-Rei, and Prof. Julia Plavnik, Indiana University Bloomington)
• Shaohuan (Nick) Zhang, "Generalizations of Zesting Construction" (Prof. Julia Plavnik and Abigail Watkins, Indiana University Bloomington)
• Karthik Prasad, "Classifying Yetter-Drinfeld Modules over the Pansera Algebras H_2n²" (mentors Prof. Julia Plavnik, Dr. Héctor Peña Pollastri, and Benjamin Spencer, Indiana University Bloomington)
• Thanh Can, "Measures on Oligomorphic Groups" (mentor Dr. Thomas Rüd)

Computer Science and Computational Biology

9:30-9:35 am: Welcoming Remarks

• Dr. Slava Gerovitch, PRIMES Program Director
• Prof. Srini Devadas, PRIMES Computer Science Section Coordinator

9:35-11:00 am: Session 11: Computer Science (in parallel with Math sessions in the morning)

• Ashley Yu, "Time Efficient Swap Regret Minimization" (mentor Maxwell Fishelson)
• Michael Han, "Improved Bounds for Novelty Games" (mentor Maxwell Fishelson)
• Albert Lu, "Alcatraz: Secure Remote Computation via Sequestered Encryption in Minimally Trusted Hardware" (mentors Dr. Sacha Servan-Schreiber and Dr. Jules Drean, Tinfoil, Inc.)
• Adam Ge and Aadya Goel, "Unlearning Mechanisms for Document Classification and Fair Decision-Making" (mentor Mayuri Sridhar)
• Eric Archerman and Celine Zhang, "Architecture-Inspired Modifications to Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machines" (mentor Simon Langowski)

11:15 am - 12:45 pm: Session 12: Computational Biology

• Rajarshi Mandal, "Interpretable Epigenetic Clocks for Disease Aging Signatures" (mentor Prof. Gil Alterovitz, Harvard Medical School)
• Jialai She, "Beyond Additivity: Sparse Isotonic Shapley Regression toward Nonlinear Explainability" (mentor Prof. Gil Alterovitz, Harvard Medical School)
• Brian Li, "Transformer-based deep learning for multiclass viral classification in metagenomic sequencing" (mentor Prof. Gil Alterovitz, Harvard Medical School)
• Aaryan Arora, "MT-BN: Multi-Scale Topological Bayesian Networks for Tractable, Interpretable Structure Learning in p>>n" (mentors Prof. Gil Alterovitz, Harvard Medical School)
• Jerry Xu, "A Unified Protein Embedding Model with Local and Global Structural Sensitivity" (mentors Prof. Gil Alterovitz, Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Shaojun Pei, Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
• Sophia Yan, "Mapping enhancer-gene interactions in the human brain reveals reduced use of enhancers for synaptic genes in schizophrenia" (mentor Dr. Nicole Rockweiler, Broad Institute)

Mathematics

2:00-3:00 pm: Session 13

• Rio Schillmoeller, "Dynamical Functionals on Ancient ARF and AC Ricci Flows" (mentor Isaac Lopez, University of Chicago)
• Arjun Agarwal, "Semisimplifications of ⍺_p-equivariant GL_n-modules" (mentor Dr. Arun S. Kannan, DRW)
• Kai Yamashita, "Radon Transform for general linear groups over finite fields" (mentor Ivan Motorin)
• Rachel Chen, "The Dual Canonical Basis in the Spin Representation via the Temperley-Lieb Algebra" (mentor Dr. Vasily Krylov, Harvard)

3:15-4:30 pm: Session 14

• Emma Li, "On the e-positivity of the Chromatic Symmetric Function of Left-melting Clique Chains" (mentor Dr. Foster Tom, Dartmouth College)
• Aaron Lin, "The Geometry of a Counting Formula for Deformations of the Braid Arrangement" (mentor Neha Goregaokar, Brandeis)
• Jiayu (Jerry) Liu, "Full-Twist Presentations for Fundamental Groups of Complements of Complexified Hyperplane Arrangements" (mentor Prof. Nathan Williams, University of Texas Dallas)
• Sophia Tatar, "Sharp Constructions for the Szemerédi-Trotter Theorem" (mentor Jiahui Yu)
• Michael Iofin, "Quasiconformal Normalization of Random Meromorphic Functions" (mentor Prof. Sergiy Merenkov, City University of New York)

Fifteenth Annual Spring-Term PRIMES Conference, May 18, 2025

Sunday, May 18

Mathematics

9:45 am: Welcoming Remarks

• Prof. Pavel Etingof, PRIMES Chief Research Advisor
• Dr. Slava Gerovitch, PRIMES Program Director
• Marisa Gaetz and Mary Stelow, PRIMES Circle coordinators

10:00-10:45 am: Session 1: PRIMES Circle

• David Moon and Brian Huang, “Polyhedra and Euler Characteristics” (mentor Luis Modes) (slides)
• Brian Pan, Daniel Wang, and Nathan Nie, “An Introduction to Spectral Graph Theory” (mentor George Shaker) (slides)
• Salma Jama and Fantice Lin, “Donuts in Different Dimensions” (mentor Ezra Guerrero) (slides)

10:55-11:55 am: Session 2: PRIMES Circle

• Auden Nash and Daniil Sheenko, “Periodicity of S-Pick Up Bricks” (mentor Honglin Zhu) (slides)
• Boston Bulis, Kyra Burke, and Lee Van Voorhis, “Number Theory” (mentor Sam Packman) (slides)
• Joseph Kasongo and Jordan Lin, “Why Your Friends are More Popular than You (Statistically Speaking)” (mentor Kai Edick) (slides)
• Marko Mano, Kalle Nikula-Gill, and Derek Yin, “Dynamical Systems and Chaos Theory” (mentor Sean Li) (slides)

12:05-1:00 pm: Session 3: Math Research and PRIMES STEP

• Evin Liang, “Cubics in Euclidean Geometry” (mentor Dr. Tanya Khovanova) (slides)
• Dillan Agrawal, Selena Ge, Jate Greene, Dohun Kim, Rajarshi Mandal, Tanish Parida, Anirudh Pulugurtha, Gordon Redwine, Soham Samanta, and Albert Xu (PRIMES STEP Senior group), “Chip-Firing on Infinite k-ary Trees” (mentor Dr. Tanya Khovanova) (slides)
• Eric Huang, Timur Kilybayev, Ryan Li, Brandon Ni, Leone Seidel, Samarth Sharma, Vivek Varanasi, Alice Sien Yin, Boya Yun, William Zelevinsky (PRIMES STEP Junior group), “Playing Your Cards Right: The Art of Josephus Dealing” (mentor Dr. Tanya Khovanova) (slides)

2:00-3:00 pm: Session 4: PRIMES Circle

• Sage Kramer, Runxuan Lin, and Anna Lu, “Set Theory and Logic” (mentor Zoe Xi) (slides)
• Leena Bhandari Cordoba and Sofia Bhandari Cordoba, “Number Theory: the Difference Game” (mentor Amy He) (slides)
• Celina Hwang, Lena Lee, and Emma Liu, “Algorithmic Exploration in Graph Theory” (mentor Julia Kozak) (slides)
• Jianing Huang and Sylvia Lee, “Introduction to Group and Ring Theory: The Foundations of Algebraic Structures” (mentor June Kayath) (slides)

3:10-3:55 pm: Session 5: PRIMES Circle

• Hannah Ahn and Carolena Douglas, “Pick’s Theorem: How to Calculate the Area of a Polygon” (mentor Katherine Tung) (slides)
• Shamini Biju, Sherri Wu, and ZZ Zhang, “Understanding the Basics of the Theory of Computation” (mentor Katherine Taylor) (slides)
• Penelope Newsome and Amarachi Okeke, “Knot Theory” (mentor Sabine Chu) (slides)

Computer Science

4:15-5:00 pm: Session 6: Computer Science Research

• Coleman DuPlessie, “Characterizing Interpretable Features of Reinforcement Learning Models” (mentor Andrew Gritsevskiy, University of Wisconsin-Madison) (slides)
• Shreyas Ekanathan, “A Fully Adaptive Radau Method to Efficiently Solve Stiff Ordinary Differential Equations” (mentor Dr. Chris Rackauckas) (slides)
• Govind Velamoor, “System-wide Timeout Strategies” (mentor Prof. Raja Sambasivan, Tufts University) (slides)

Contact

With questions, contact PRIMES Program Director Slava Gerovitch at