AMS Student Chapter Seminar

The AMS Student Chapter Seminar (aka Donut Seminar) is an informal, graduate student seminar on a wide range of mathematical topics. The goal of the seminar is to promote community building and give graduate students an opportunity to communicate fun, accessible math to their peers in a stress-free (but not sugar-free) environment. Pastries (usually donuts) will be provided.

• When: Thursdays 4:00-4:30pm
• Where: Van Vleck, 9th floor lounge (unless otherwise announced)
• Organizers: Ivan Aidun, Alex Bonat, Kaiyi Huang, Ethan Schondorf

Everyone is welcome to give a talk. To sign up, please contact one of the organizers with a title and abstract. Talks are 25 minutes long and should avoid assuming significant mathematical background beyond first-year graduate courses.

The schedule of talks from past semesters can be found here.

Spring 2025

Date	Speaker	Title	Abstract
January 30	Caroline Nunn	Watch Caroline eat a donut: an introduction to Morse theory	Morse theory has been described as "one of the deepest applications of differential geometry to topology." However, the concepts involved in Morse theory are so simple that you can learn them just by watching me eat a donut (and subsequently watching me give a 20 minute talk explaining Morse theory.) No background is needed beyond calc 3 and a passing familiarity with donuts.
February 6	TBA	TBA	TBA
February 13	Chiara Travesset	TBA	TBA
February 20	TBA	TBA	TBA
February 27	TBA	TBA	TBA
March 6	TBA	TBA	TBA
March 13	TBA	TBA	TBA
March 19	TBA	Special Visit Day Talks!	TBA
March 20	CANCELLED	NONE	NONE
March 27	TBA	TBA	TBA
April 3	TBA	TBA	TBA
April 10	TBA	TBA	TBA
April 17	TBA	TBA	TBA
April 24	TBA	TBA	TBA
May 1	TBA	TBA	TBA

Fall 2024

Date	Speaker	Title	Abstract
September 12	Ari Davidovsky	95% of people can't solve this!	We will attempt to answer this question and along the way explore how algebra and geometry work together to solve problems in number theory.
September 19	CANCELLED	NONE	NONE
September 26	Mateo Morales	Officially petitioning the department to acquire a ping pong table.	Ever want to prove something is a free group of rank 2? Me too. One way to do this is to use a ping pong argument of how a group generated by two elements acts on a set. I will illustrate the ping pong argument using an example of matrices, explain how it works, and explain why, kinda. Very approachable if you know what a group is but does require tons of ping pong experience.
October 3	Karthik Ravishankar	Incompleteness for the working mathematician	In this talk we'll take a look at Gödels famous incompleteness theorems and look at some of its immediate as well as interesting consequences. No background in logic is necessary!
October 10	Elizabeth Hankins	Mathematical Origami and Flat-Foldability	If you've ever unfolded a piece of origami, you might have noticed complicated symmetries in the pattern of creases left behind. What patterns of lines can and cannot be folded into origami? And why is it sometimes hard to determine?
October 17	CANCELLED	NONE	NONE
October 24	CANCELLED	NONE	NONE
October 31	Jacob Wood	What is the length of a potato pumpkin?	How many is a jack-o-lantern? What is the length of a pumpkin? These questions sound like nonsense, but they have perfectly reasonable interpretations with perfectly reasonable answers. On our journey through the haunted house with two rooms, we will encounter some scary characters like differential topology and measure theory. Do not fear; little to no experience in either subject is required.
November 7	CANCELLED: DISTINGUISHED LECTURE	NONE	NONE
November 14	Sapir Ben-Shahar	Hexaflexagons	Come along for some hexaflexafun and discover the mysterious properties of hexaflexagons, the bestagons! Learn how to make and navigate through the folds of your very own paper hexaflexagon. No prior knowledge of hexagons (or hexaflexagons) is assumed.
November 21	Andrew Krenz	All concepts are database queries	A celebrated result of applied category theory states that the category of small categories is equivalent to the category of database schemas. Therefore, every theorem about small categories can be interpreted as a theorem about databases.  Maybe you've heard someone repeat Mac Lane's famous slogan "all concepts are Kan extensions."  In this talk, I'll give a high-level overview of/introduction to categorical database theory (developed by David Spivak) wherein Kan extensions play the role of regular every day database queries.  No familiarity with categories or databases will be assumed.
November 28	THANKSGIVING	NONE	NONE
December 5	Ivan Aidun	Impromptu talk	Caroline is sick today, so Ivan will give an impromptu talk about something.