Mon 16 Mar 13:00: What the History of Mathematics tells us about Diversity and Inclusion MHM - Modern History of Mathematics
This workshop is free to attend. Mathematics is often presented as timeless, abstract, and culture-free. Yet its history tells a far richer story: one of diverse traditions, evolving methods, collaborative discovery, and multiple ways of representing and reasoning about the world. Recognising this broader history does more than deepen our understanding of the discipline. It also opens new ways of thinking about participation, belonging, and inclusion in today’s mathematical sciences. This interactive workshop draws on historical examples to explore how mathematical knowledge has developed through varied cultural settings, practical needs, and intellectual styles. By examining how mathematics has always been a human activity shaped by people and the cultures of inquiry they thrive in, we will consider how these perspectives can positively inform contemporary teaching, research, and discovery, and outreach. The aim is not to change what mathematics demands or compromise rigour, but to better recognise the many ways mathematical insight can emerge and flourish. The workshop invites educators, researchers, and students to reflect on how recognising mathematics as a profoundly human endeavour can help build more equitable and inclusive environments in which a wider range of thinkers and thinking-styles can flourish. Through historical case studies spanning cultures, communities, and practices, we will explore how the history of mathematics broadens our view beyond many modern assumptions about who does mathematics and what counts as mathematical competence. These perspectives help reveal multiple pathways into the discipline and broaden the ways students can recognise, develop, and demonstrate their strengths. By presenting mathematics not as a distant or exclusionary ideal but as a living, culturally embedded, and continually evolving practice, the workshop foregrounds how historical understanding can strengthen belonging, challenge inherited barriers, and invite more people to see themselves as legitimate participants in mathematical work. Participants will leave with historically grounded insights and practical strategies for communicating mathematics in ways that advance inclusion while remaining intellectually rigorous and faithful to the discipline’s past. This event is being delivered as a follow up to the Modern History of Mathematics research programme.
MHM - Modern History of Mathematics
- Speaker: Clemency Montelle (University of Canterbury, NZ)
- Monday 16 March 2026, 13:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Thu 04 Jun 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof. José J. Baldoví (University of Valencia)
- Thursday 04 June 2026, 14:00-15:15
- Venue: Seminar Room 3, RDC..
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Thu 19 Mar 14:00: Mechanistic insights into electron-transfer reactions: from electrocatalysis to solar cells
Electron transfer underpins fundamental biological processes such as respiration and photosynthesis as well as modern technologies. Unpaired electrons play an important role in numerous such redox reactions but these can be difficult to capture. In this talk I will discuss how we are exploiting and developing electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) based techniques in conjunction with electrochemistry and materials chemistry to gain mechanistic insights into electron-transfer reactions.
I will introduce film-electrochemical EPR spectroscopy (FE EPR ) as a tool to investigate redox-active molecules, including catalysts. With operando FE-EPR, using indium-tin-oxide electrodes, we showed that it is possible to gain new mechanistic insight by monitoring the evolution of radicals during catalysis in real time.1 I will further discuss our ongoing work on extending FE-EPR to metalloenzymes,2,3 and on exploring the properties of carbon nanotube structures as electrode materials.4 Lastly, I will discuss how our efforts to understand interfacial electron transfer have led to the improved efficiency of tin perovskite solar cells.5
Short Bio Maxie M. Rößler is Professor of Chemistry at Imperial College London. She earned her MChem degree from the University of Oxford and completed her DPhil in Inorganic Chemistry under Prof. Fraser Armstrong FRS in 2012. Maxie began her independent career at Queen Mary University of London in 2013 and joined Imperial in 2019, where she founded the Centre for Pulse EPR (PEPR). Her recent recognitions include being named the Blavatnik Awards in the UK Chemistry Laureate (2026), receiving the Royal Society of Chemistry Joseph Black Prize (2024) and the European Bioinorganic Chemistry Medal (2022). 1. Seif-Eddine, M. et al. Operando film-electrochemical EPR spectroscopy tracks radical intermediates in surface-immobilized catalysts. Nature Chemistry 2024 16:6 16, 1015–1023 (2024). 2. Facchetti, D., Dang, Y., Seif-Eddine, M., Geoghegan, B. L. & Roessler, M. M. Film-electrochemical EPR spectroscopy to investigate electron transfer in membrane proteins in their native environment. Chemical Communications 60, 12690–12693 (2024). 3. Abdiaziz, K., Salvadori, E., Sokol, K. P., Reisner, E. & Roessler, M. M. Protein film electrochemical EPR spectroscopy as a technique to investigate redox reactions in biomolecules. Chemical Communications 55, 8840–8843 (2019). 4. Dang, Y., Seif-Eddine, M., Ying, Z., Shaffer, M. S. P. & Roessler, M. M. Carbon Nanotube Electrodes as a Versatile Platform for Operando Film-Electrochemical EPR Spectroscopy. Manuscript under review (2026), doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2026-t8sfs. 5. Fang, F. et al. Electron hopping in conjugated molecular wires with application to solar cells. Nature Chemistry 2026 1–9 (2026) doi:10.1038/s41557-025-02034-0.
- Speaker: Professor Maxie M. Roessler
- Thursday 19 March 2026, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Dept of Chemistry, Wolfson Lecture Theatre .
- Series: Materials Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Sharon Connor.
Mon 16 Mar 14:00: From phase transitions to minimal submanifolds in low codimensions
Minimal submanifolds—critical points of the area functional—play a central role in geometric analysis, with deep connections to differential geometry, topology, and the calculus of variations. A major breakthrough in their existence theory came with Almgren’s min–max framework in the 1960s, which provides a powerful but technically intricate approach to constructing minimal submanifolds in great generality.
In recent years, a new PDE -based perspective has emerged, inspired by models from phase transitions and superconductivity. The guiding principle is to realize minimal submanifolds as limits of nodal sets of critical points of elliptic functionals. In this talk, I will first give an overview of this variational–PDE framework. Using ongoing series of works with collaborators as examples, I will show how it can offer new conceptual insights and, in some settings, greater flexibility than classical min–max techniques. In codimension one, I will focus on the Allen–Cahn functional and explain how it can be used to construct minimal hypersurfaces with free boundary, i.e. meeting the ambient boundary orthogonally. We will then move to higher codimensions (specifically codimensions 2 and 3), where the theory is much less developed. Here, I will discuss the abelian and non-abelian Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals as natural higher codimension analogues and present recent progress in this setting. I will highlight other successes of this theory, and point to some open problems along the way. The content of this talk is based on joint works with Martin Li, Lorenzo Sarnataro, Alessandro Pigati, and Daniel Stern.
- Speaker: Davide Parise (Imperial College London)
- Monday 16 March 2026, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Geometric Analysis & Partial Differential Equations seminar; organiser: Zoe Wyatt.
Thu 12 Mar 13:30: Caroline Johnson / GGI OfB discussion
- Speaker:
- Thursday 12 March 2026, 13:30-15:30
- Venue: Telecommunications Room.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Thu 19 Mar 11:00: Rare beauty decays as precision probes of new physics
Rare decays of beauty hadrons provide some of the most sensitive probes of physics beyond the Standard Model, offering indirect access to energy scales orders of magnitude above the direct reach of the Large Hadron Collider. These processes occur via flavour-changing neutral currents, in which a beauty quark transforms into another down-type quark and two charged leptons. Forbidden at tree level in the Standard Model and therefore highly suppressed, such decays are particularly sensitive to contributions from heavy new particles.
Over the past decade and a half, the LHCb experiment has studied these processes with steadily increasing precision. Intriguingly, several measurements – particularly of branching fractions and angular observables – have shown tensions with Standard Model predictions. These anomalies may provide hints of new fundamental physics, although their interpretation is complicated by theoretical uncertainties associated with hadronic effects.
In this talk I will review recent progress in the study of rare beauty decays at LHCb and discuss how the rapidly growing dataset from the upgraded detector is transforming these modes into precision probes of new physics. I will highlight new measurements that can clarify the origin of the current anomalies and outline future opportunities for discovering physics beyond the Standard Model.
- Speaker: Dr Harry Cliff, Cavendish Laboratory
- Thursday 19 March 2026, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: The Lecture Theatre, Floor 2 Ray Dolby Centre.
- Series: Other Departmental Seminars; organiser: Leona Hope-Coles.
Mon 23 Mar 11:45: Lower bounds for the Steklov eigenvalues of a Riemannian manifold GSTW02 - Geometry of eigenvalues
On a connected compact Riemannian manifold M with b boundary components, I will explain how to obtain geometric lower bounds for the first nonzero Steklov eigenvalue. These lower bounds are related to the Laplace eigenvalues on the boundary of M and on the first positive eigenvalue of the Neumann problem for the Laplacian on M. This is a joint work with T. Chakradhar and A. Hassannezhad.
GSTW02 - Geometry of eigenvalues
- Speaker: Bruno Colbois (Université de Neuchâtel)
- Monday 23 March 2026, 11:45-12:45
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Thu 14 May 15:00: Advances in Label-Free High-Resolution Molecular Imaging using J Series III Cluster SIMS
- High Sensitivity: from ppb to ppm levels.
- High spatial resolution: down to 300 nm beam spot size
- Matrix free
- 2D and 3D molecular imaging
- Cryogenic Capabilities
I will present the use of J Series III Cluster SIMS to investigate the 2D and 3D structure of a range of materials seen in Ionoptika’s lab including hybrid materials such as perovskite solar cells using the hard ionisation mode (small cluster ion beams) without preferential sputtering effects. I will also introduce novel future applications using Cluster SIMS such as measuring physical property (surface hardness).
- Speaker: Naoko Sano, Ionoptika. Ltd., Chandler’s Ford, UK
- Thursday 14 May 2026, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room West, Room A0.015, Ray Dolby Centre, Cavendish Laboratory.
- Series: Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group; organiser: Malvina Constantinou.
Wed 01 Apr 12:10: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: Sven Krippendorf (University of Cambridge)
- Wednesday 01 April 2026, 12:10-12:50
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Wed 01 Apr 11:50: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker:
- Wednesday 01 April 2026, 11:50-12:10
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Wed 01 Apr 11:30: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker:
- Wednesday 01 April 2026, 11:30-11:50
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Tue 31 Mar 16:00: Panel Discussion II OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: William Timothy Gowers (University of Cambridge), Fenner Tanswell (Technische Universität Berlin), Deborah Kent (University of St Andrews), Mikkel Willum Johansen (University of Copenhagen), Colin Jakob Rittberg (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
- Tuesday 31 March 2026, 16:00-17:30
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Tue 31 Mar 15:00: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker:
- Tuesday 31 March 2026, 15:00-15:20
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Tue 31 Mar 14:40: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker:
- Tuesday 31 March 2026, 14:40-15:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Tue 31 Mar 14:20: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: Adam Zsolt Wagner (Google DeepMind)
- Tuesday 31 March 2026, 14:20-14:40
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Mon 30 Mar 16:00: Panel Discussion I OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: Richard Sever (openRxiv), Tracey Teal (openRxiv), Steinn Sigurdson (Cornell University), Christian Bär (Universität Potsdam), Thomas Dietterich (Oregon State University)
- Monday 30 March 2026, 16:00-17:30
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Mon 30 Mar 14:30: AI in Overleaf: Current Features and New Directions OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
Overleaf is an online collaborative editor for documents written in the LaTeX markup language. Millions of people now use it. User research tells us that many authors who use Overleaf also use AI tools heavily and for a wide variety of tasks throughout the research lifecycle. This research has informed several new features that we’ve shipped or that are available (or soon to be available) in our beta/labs programme. This talk will walk through some of these current and coming soon features. For example, large language models are good at fixing those annoying and cryptic LaTeX errors and may help solve some longstanding and difficult problems with producing accessible PDFs from LaTeX. For research writing more generally, we are exploring ways to intelligently leverage scholarly literature while writing, for example to suggest missing citations or identify whether statements are well supported by the literature or not.
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: John Lees-Miller (Overleaf (Writelatex Ltd))
- Monday 30 March 2026, 14:30-15:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Mon 30 Mar 14:00: Title TBC OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: Ramin Zabih (Cornell University)
- Monday 30 March 2026, 14:00-14:30
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Wed 01 Apr 10:00: Human-machine mathematical collaboration with modern AI - Virtual presentation OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
I grew up fascinated by computers. However, as I trained as a mathematician, I was consistently surprised by how little use I could get out of computers. Most examples I cared about were simply intractable. In some examples, I could compute too much, and I had no idea where to look in the output. Often visualizing the output in any reasonable way was impossible, or would involve many weeks of careful programming. In collaboration with DeepMind, I worked on some of the first applications of neural networks to problems in pure mathematics. Here the potential is obvious, but the engineering difficulties are real, necessitating collaboration between mathematicians and engineers. Modern tools (particularly coding agents, and the *Evolve algorithms) provide a genuine paradigm shift. Suddenly, it has become much easier to run experiments, visualize data, and connect powerful systems. I will give an overview of some of the work I’ve been involved recently. The emphasis will be on three aspects: a) the essential role played by specialized software (LP solvers, SageMath, Magma, GAP , …); b) the skillset needed to do this work is significantly different to that of the typical working pure mathematician, which presents challenges for our educational programs at all levels, c) the emerging challenges around access to models and compute, which threaten the fundamental democracy of mathematics.
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: Geordie Williamson (University of Sydney)
- Wednesday 01 April 2026, 10:00-11:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Mon 30 Mar 14:40: AI in Overleaf: Current Features and New Directions OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
Overleaf is an online collaborative editor for documents written in the LaTeX markup language. Millions of people now use it. User research tells us that many authors who use Overleaf also use AI tools heavily and for a wide variety of tasks throughout the research lifecycle. This research has informed several new features that we’ve shipped or that are available (or soon to be available) in our beta/labs programme. This talk will walk through some of these current and coming soon features. For example, large language models are good at fixing those annoying and cryptic LaTeX errors and may help solve some longstanding and difficult problems with producing accessible PDFs from LaTeX. For research writing more generally, we are exploring ways to intelligently leverage scholarly literature while writing, for example to suggest missing citations or identify whether statements are well supported by the literature or not.
OOEW11 - AI for Maths and Open Science
- Speaker: John Lees-Miller (Overleaf (Writelatex Ltd))
- Monday 30 March 2026, 14:40-15:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.