Previous events

Conference

The series of String-Math conferences has developed into a central event on the interface between mathematics and physics related to string theory, quantum field theory and neighbouring subjects. This conference took place July 1-5 2019 and was organised by the Department of Physics and Astronomy and by the Department of Mathematics of Uppsala University with the support from the grant “Geometry and Physics” from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation.

All information about the String Math Conference 2019 can be found on the conference page.

Public lecture

Two of the most renowned scientists and public speakers in the world presented their views on the role of mathematics in the study of the universe. What are the mathematical puzzles that the cosmos offers? What role does unification play in mathematics? These and other mindboggling questions were discussed in two fascinating lectures that brought the audience to the forefront of research in mathematics and the cosmos.

Programme

13:00 Doors open to the Grand Auditorium in Uppsala University Main Building.
13:30-13:40 Welcome by Prof. Johan Tysk and Prof. Ulf Danielsson.
13:40-14:40 Prof. Cumrun Vafa: “Unravelling the Universe with Mathematical Puzzles” - watch the recorded lecture on Youtube
14:40-15:00 Break
15:00-16:00 Prof. Edward Frenkel: “The idea of unification in mathematics” - watch the recorded lecture on Youtube

Professor Edward Frenkel

Edward Frenkel is a famous Russian-American mathematician, director and renowned writer of the New York Times bestseller “Love and Math”. His interest in mathematics started at an early stage when he privately studied advanced mathematics while in high school. He later got accepted as a graduate student at Harvard University, where he then continued his academic carrier as an associate professor. Frenkel is currently a professor of mathematics at University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Frenkel has been awarded many prestigious prizes for his work as a mathematician but also for his public outreach activity. He won the Euler Book Prize for his book “Love and Math”, which was also named one of the Best Books of 2013 by Amazon. The book has also been translated to 18 languages. He is also well known in the field for his ability to communicate popular science and in particular his numerous public talks and radio interviews.

Professor Cumrun Vafa

Cumrun Vafa is a professor in physics at Harvard University, where he has been teaching and performing research since 1985. He was born in Iran 1960 and later moved to the US where he obtained his B.S. in mathematics and physics from MIT and then his PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University.

With over 200 scientific publications, Professor Vafa has made many profound contributions to theoretical physics. Professor Vafa’s research is focused on string theory and the mathematical tools that are needed to explore it. For his groundbreaking work he has received several prizes such as the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and the 2008 Dirac Medal of ICTP. He has also been awarded prizes for his work within mathematical physics from American Physical Society and American Mathematical Society.

The borderline between theoretical physics and mathematics has seen a remarkable progress over the last 20 years, with gauge theory, string theory, 4-manifold topology, Floer homology theories, etc. The seminar aims at increasing the interaction between the two disciplines. Both mathematicians and physicists will speak in the seminar, and the talks will hopefully be understandable by both communities.

Jointly organised by the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Organizers: Tobias Ekholm and Maxim Zabzine.

Spring 2023

08/03/2023

Title: Introduction to spectral networks
Speaker: Pietro Longhi
Video

15/02/2023

Mini-course on modern aspects of integrability - part 3
Lecturer: Dmytro Volin

08/02/2023

Mini-course on modern aspects of integrability - part 2
Lecturer: Dmytro Volin

25/01/2023

Mini-course on modern aspects of integrability - part 1
Lecturer: Dmytro Volin

18/01/2023

Title: Operads and Chiral integration (Factorization homology)
Lecturer: Thomas Kragh (Uppsala University)

Fall 2022

14/12/2022

Title: The Blowup Formula for the Instanton Part of Vafa-Witten Invariants on Projective Surfaces
Seaker: Oliver Leigh (Uppsala University)

07/12/2022

Title: Supersymmetric Partition Functions and the Coulomb Branch of 5d SCFTs
Speaker: Cyril Closset, Birmingham U.

09/11/2022

Title: Geometric Engineering Correspondences
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

26/10/2022

Title: Non-invertible symmetries and (higher) categories
Speaker: Christian Copetti, SISSA

19/10/2022

Title: Skein valued curve counts in basic examples
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

Spring 2022

04/04/2022

Title: A physics approach to counting special Lagrangian 3-manifolds (Part 2)
Speaker: Pietro Longhi

​16/03/2022

Title: A physics approach to counting special Lagrangian 3-manifolds
Speaker: Pietro Longhi

Fall 2021

16/02/2022 (postponed due to new covid restrictions)

Title: Knot invariants and Topological Strings - Review (Part 3)
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

15/12/2021

Title: Knot invariants and Topological Strings - Review (Part 2)
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

1/12/2021

Title: Knot invariants and Topological Strings - Review
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

10/11/2021

Title: HOMFLY homology and generalized quiver partition functions (part 3)
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

20/10/2021

Title: HOMFLY homology and generalized quiver partition functions (part 2)
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

06/10/2021

Title: HOMFLY homology and generalized quiver partition functions
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

Spring 2020
Strings, Geometry, and Quantum Fields Seminar

26/02/2020

Title: Generalized global symmetries - I
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

04/03/2020

Title: Recent Progresses about Special Holonomy Manifolds - I
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

11/03/2020

Title: Generalized global symmetries - II
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

25/03/2020

Title: Boxcounting - part 1
Speaker: Nicolo Piazzalunga

01/04/2020

Title: Generalized Global Symmetry - III
Speaker: Usman Naseer

08/04/2020

Title: Boxcounting - part 2
Speaker: Nicolo Piazzalunga

15/04/2020

Title: Generalized Global Symmetry - IV
Speaker: Usman Naseer and Luca Cassia

21/04/2020 (Note: Tuesday)

Title: IIB flux non-commutativity and the global structure of field theories (Nordic Seminar)
Speaker: Iñaki García-Extebarria

29/04/2020

Title: Generalized Global Symmetry - V
Speaker: Luca Cassia

13/05/2020

Title: Recent Progresses about Special Holonomy Manifolds - II
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

20/05/2020

Title: G2-manifolds from Calabi-Yau 3-folds
Speaker: Lorenzo Foscolo (UCL)

03/06/2020

Title: Higher form symmetries and M-theory
Speaker: Michele Del Zotto

17/06/2020

Title: Toric ideas for special geometries
Speaker: Andrew Francis Swann (Aarhus University)

24/06/2020

Title: Applications to the classification of phases
Speaker: Arash Arabi Ardehali

Spring 2018

04/04/2018

Title: Variations on the theme of Ding-Iohara-Miki algebra
Speaker: Yegor Zenkevich

25/04/2018

Title: Large N duality via SFT stretching and skein on brane I
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

09/05/2018

Title: Large N duality via SFT stretching and skein on brane II
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

Fall 2017

21/09/2017 (Note: Thursday)

Title: Something Interesting I
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

27/09/2017

Title: Something Interesting II
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

4/10/2017

Title: Special cases of the orbifold version of Zvonkine’s r-ELSV formula I
Speaker: Aleksandr Popolitov

11/10/2017

Title: Special cases of the orbifold version of Zvonkine’s r-ELSV formula II
Speaker: Aleksandr Popolitov

18/10/2017

Title: From knots to BPS invariants via algebraic curves
Speaker: Piotr Kucharski

25/10/2017

Title: Knots-quivers correspondence
Speaker: Piotr Kucharski

29/11/2017

Title: Physics conjectures about topological Fukaya category
Speaker: Luigi Tizzano

Spring 2017

11/01/2017

Title: Knot polynomial and SW invariants from 3D-3D correspondence I
Speaker: Jian Qiu

18/01/2017

Title: Knot polynomial and SW invariants from 3D-3D correspondence II
Speaker: Jian Qiu

01/02/2017

Title: Knot polynomial and SW invariants from 3D-3D correspondence III
Speaker: Jian Qiu

08/02/2017

Title: Airy structures and symplectic geometry of topological recursion I
Speaker: Thomas Kragh

15/02/2017

Title: Physical and mathematical aspects of the WKB approximation I
Speaker: Konstantina Polydorou

22/02/2017

Title: Physical and mathematical aspects of the WKB approximation I
Speaker: Konstantina Polydorou

01/03/2017

Title: Airy structures and symplectic geometry of topological recursion I
Speaker: Thomas Kragh

08/03/2017

Title: Quantization of augmentation curves and topological recursion I
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

14/03/2017

Title: Symplectic reduction and toric geometry
Speaker: Jacob Winding

22/03/2017

Title: Quantization of augmentation curves and topological recursion II
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

29/03/2017

Title: Quantization of augmentation curves and topological recursion III
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

05/04/2017

Title: The Ricci flow and its physical applications
Speaker: Giuseppe Dibitetto

12/04/2017

Title: The Ricci flow and Kähler manifolds
Speaker: Giuseppe Dibitetto

26/04/2017

Title: Informal discussion about contact homology and strings I
Speaker: Maxim Zabzine and Tobias Ekholm

03/05/2017

Title: Informal discussion about contact homology and strings II
Speaker: Maxim Zabzine and Tobias Ekholm

24/05/2017

Title: Informal discussion about contact homology and strings III
Speaker: Maxim Zabzine and Tobias Ekholm

Spring 2016

13/01/2016

Title: Wall-Crossing I
Speaker: Pietro Longhi

20/01/2016

Title: Wall-Crossing II
Speaker: Pietro Longhi

27/01/2016

Title: Examples of wall crossing phenomena in Floer theory I
Speaker: Maksim Maydanskiy

10/02/2016

Title: Examples of wall crossing phenomena in Floer theory II
Speaker: Maksim Maydanskiy

17/02/2016

Title: Examples of wall crossing phenomena in Floer theory III
Speaker: Maksim Maydanskiy

Fall 2015

01/09/2015

Title: More on the ADHM contruction I
Speaker: Jian Qiu

09/09/2015

Title: More on the ADHM contruction II
Speaker: Jian Qiu

16/09/2015

Title: More on the ADHM contruction III
Speaker: Jian Qiu

30/09/2015

Title: Introduction to Topological String Theory I
Speaker: Luigi Tizzano

07/10/2015

Title: Introduction to Topological String Theory II
Speaker: Luigi Tizzano

21/10/2015

Title: String Topology I
Speaker: Thomas Kragh

28/10/2015

Title: Introduction to Topological String Theory III
Speaker: Luigi Tizzano

04/11/2015

Title: Floer Monopole groups of a three-manifold I
Speaker: Sebastian Pöder

11/11/2015

Title: Floer Monopole groups of a three-manifold II
Speaker: Sebastian Pöder

18/11/2015

Title: String Topology II
Speaker: Thomas Kragh

02/12/2015

Title: String Topology III
Speaker: Thomas Kragh

09/12/2015

Title: String Topology IV + Introduction to Vertex Algebras
Speaker: Thomas Kragh & Jacob Winding

16/12/2015

Title: String Topology V
Speaker: Thomas Kragh

Spring 2015

24/02/2015

Title: The Gopakumar-Vafa conjecture for symplectic Calabi-Yau 6-folds
Speaker: Remi Cretois

03/03/2015

Title: The Gopakumar-Vafa invariants from the point of view of physics
Speaker: Maxim Zabzine

17/03/2015

Title: Introduction to Donaldson-Thomas theory
Speaker: Jian Qiu

07/04/2015

Title: Gromov-Witten and Donaldson-Thomas in toric setting
Speaker: Jian Qiu

28/04/2015

Title: Introduction to F-theory
Speaker: Luigi Tizzano

06/05/2015

Title: Introduction to Contact Homology I
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

12/05/2015

Title: Introduction to Contact Homology II
Speaker: Tobias Ekholm

19/05/2015

Title: 5D Gauge Theories, Instantons and Contact Geometry I
Speaker: Maxim Zabzine

27/05/2015

Title: 5D Gauge Theories, Instantons and Contact Geometry II
Speaker: Maxim Zabzine

02/06/2015

Title: Introduction to the ADHM construction I
Speaker: Jian Qiu

09/06/2015

Title: Introduction to the ADHM construction II
Speaker: Jian Qiu