Programs & Events
Complex and p-adic Dynamics
Feb 13 - 17, 2012
This workshop will bring together researchers working in classical complex dynamics and in the newer area of p-adic (nonarchimedean) dynamics. It will promote interactions between the two groups by highlighting the similarities and differences between complex and p-adic dynamics.
In particular, it will address Berkovich space, whose introduction has greatly enhanced the exchange of ideas between complex and p-adic dynamics.
Organizing Committee
- Matthew Baker
- Rob Benedetto
- Charles Favre
- Kevin Pilgrim
- Juan Rivera-Letelier

Global Arithmetic Dynamics
Mar 19 - 23, 2012
This workshop will examine global arithmetic dynamics from the perspectives of number theory, algebraic geometry, and model theory. It will introduce aspects of this topic to a larger audience, and clarify connections between different perspectives. In addition, there will be extensive discussion periods in which participants can collaborate on theoretical and computational aspects of the topic.
Organizing Committee
- Xander Faber
- Michelle Manes
- Lucien Szpiro
- Thomas Tucker
- Michael Zieve

Special Colloquium: "Spheres"
Apr 5, 2012
A historical survey on progress in understanding topological spheres and differentiable spheres.
Thursday, April 5, 2012 from 4:00pm-5:00pm. There will be a reception following the talk.

Special Colloquium: "Smooth Topology-Preserving Approximations of Rough Domains"
Apr 12, 2012
The talk concerns bounded domains with continuous boundary. We study how the corresponding "good direction", with respect to which the boundary is locally a graph of a continuous function, varies in a neighborhood of the boundary, and thus show how such domains can be approximated both from the inside and the outside by topologically equivalent smooth domains. The good directions form a globally-defined field that carries some topological information about the domain, which we explore. Finally we describe a surprising consequence of the study, that the domain has portions of the boundary with better regularity. This is joint work with Arghir Zarnescu.
This is a joint colloquium co-sponsored by Applied Mathematics, Mathematics, and ICERM. Thursday, April 12, 2012 from 4:30-5:30pm in the lecture hall at ICERM. There will be a reception at 4pm preceding the talk.

Moduli Spaces Associated to Dynamical Systems
Apr 16 - 20, 2012
This workshop will bring together dynamicists, number theorists, and algebraic geometers to study the geometry and arithmetic of dynamical moduli spaces. The set Ratdn of rational degree d self-maps of Pn has a natural structure as an affine variety. The dynamical moduli space Mdn is the quotient of Ratdn by the conjugation action of the group PGLn+1. Problems to be investigated include the geometry of Mdn, the distribution of special maps such as post-critically finite maps in Mdn, dynamical modular curves associated to one-parameter families of maps with a marked point of period N, and degeneration of families of maps and the associated points on the boundary of moduli space. A tutorial session will be held the week before this workshop.
Organizing Committee
- Laura DeMarco
- Adam Epstein
- Sarah Koch
- Curtis McMullen
- Joseph Silverman

Special Colloquium: "The Prevalence of Chaos"
May 3, 2012
Dynamics is the study of systems which evolve with known rules. We want to understand whether the long term behavior is predictable or chaotic. For example, is the solar system stable? Very often, this amounts to studying recursively defined sequences. After presenting various dynamical systems and showing what chaos is, I will focus on sequences of the form
For such sequences, the locus of chaos is known as a Julia set. I will present a result (joint with Arnaud Cheritat) that there exist parameters c ∈ C for which chaos prevails: with positive probability, a randomly chosen initial point Ζ0 will have unpredictable behavior.
This is a joint colloquium co-sponsored ICERM and the Clay Mathematics Institute. Thursday, May 3, 2012 from 4:00pm-5:00pm. There will... (more)

Heterostructured Nanocrystalline Materials
May 30 - Jun 1, 2012
The theme of this workshop is the computation, modeling, and mathematical analysis of heterostructured nanocrystalline materials. This includes quantum dots, nanowires, graphene, and grain boundaries. These various phenomena will be discussed in the context of modeling and computation on different scales ranging from density functional theory to continuum mechanics. The workshop will also address various techniques that allow one to combine models on different scales to yield efficient computational methods.
Organizing Committee
- Tim Schulze
- Vivek Shenoy
- Peter Smereka

Research Experiences for Undergraduate Faculty (REUF)
Jun 4 - 8, 2012
This workshop, sponsored by AIM, ICERM, and the NSF, will introduce undergraduate faculty to research opportunities in several fields of mathematics that will equip them with the tools to mentor students in undergraduate research in mathematics. Lectures at the workshop will provide background information and introduce open problems. The majority of the workshop will be spent working on problems, reporting on progress, and formulating plans for future work.
The workshop will be hosted at ICERM.
Preference will be given to faculty who teach and advise substantial numbers of minority students.
Mathematical topics at the workshop will include algebra, graph theory, and number theory.
For more information email workshops@aimath.org or go to http://aimath.org/ARCC/workshops/reuf4.html.
Organizing Committee
- Leslie Hogben
- Roselyn Williams
- Ulrica Wilson

NSF/CBMS Conference: Finite Element Exterior Calculus (FEEC)
Jun 11 - 15, 2012
FEEC is a recent advance in the mathematics of finite element methods that employs differential complexes to construct stable numerical schemes for several important types of application problems. It has aroused great interest because it both presents interesting mathematical problems and shows great potential for application in computational science and engineering. The concentrated sequence of lectures in this program will provide participants with an understanding of the mathematical tools required to fully grasp the concepts in FEEC. ICERM is pleased to host this NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conference.
Douglas Arnold will deliver 10 lectures, one in the morning and one in the afternoon of each day of the workshop. Richard Falk and Anil Hirani will both give one presentation.
Limited funding is available to support participants.
Organizing Committee
- Alan Demlow
- Johnny Guzman
- Dmitriy Leykekhman

Summer@ICERM 2012: Geometry and Dynamics
Jun 18 - Aug 10, 2012
Imagine spending eight-weeks on the beautiful Brown University campus in historic Providence, RI, working in a small team setting to solve mathematical research problems developed by faculty experts in their fields.
Imagine creating career-building connections between peers, near peers (graduate students and postdocs), and academic professionals.
Imagine spending your summer in a fun, memorable, and intellectually stimulating environment.
Now, imagine having this experience with support for travel within the U.S., room and board paid, plus a $3,000 stipend*.
The Summer@ICERM 2012 program is designed for a select group of 10-12 undergraduate scholars. Students in the 2012 program worked in small groups of two or three, supervised by a faculty advisor and aided by a teaching... (more)
Organizing Committee
- Pat Hooper
- Sergei Tabachnikov

Bridging Scales in Computational Polymer Chemistry
Aug 6 - 10, 2012
Many important advances in material and biomedical science will come from controlling the chemical properties and nanoscale morphology of polymer mixtures. Predicting the longtime continuum-level properties of such complex systems poses a canonical computational challenge due to the disparate length and time scales separating the molecular description from the macroscopic behavior, particularly the evolution of morphology. This workshop focuses on four overlapping approaches to bridging this gap: Accelerated Molecular Methods, Coarse-Graining of Molecular Dynamics, Computational Approaches to Self-Consistent Mean Field, and Coupled Molecular and Continuum-Variational models. The goal is to spur the development of hybrid computational methods with the capacity to identify and characterize the rare events and the driving forces which steer the systems towards equilibrium, and connect the burgeoning growth in parallel-computation techniques for particle-based systems with recently... (more)
Organizing Committee
- Andrew Christlieb
- Cecilia Clementi
- Keith Promislow
- Mark Tuckerman
- Zhengfu Xu

Computational Challenges in Probability
Sep 5 - Dec 7, 2012
Modern explorations in science, technology and medicine increasingly demand complex stochastic models. Computational and theoretical advances are needed in order to formulate, analyze, apply and interpret these models. Recent years have witnessed a remarkable interplay between computation and probability. On the one hand, probabilistic techniques have led to powerful computational methods such as Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, while on the other hand the calculation of probabilistic quantities such as modes and marginals of high-dimensional distributions and the analysis of data from random samples has posed several computational challenges.
The Fall 2012 Semester on "Computational Challenges in Probability" aims to bring together leading experts and young researchers who are advancing the use of probabilistic and computational methods to study complex models in a variety of fields. The goal is to identify common challenges, exchange existing tools, reveal new application areas... (more)
Organizing Committee
- Jose Blanchet
- Paul Dupuis
- Roger Ghanem
- George Karniadakis
- Kavita Ramanan
- Boris Rozovsky
- Eric Vanden-Eijnden
