G. Milton Wing Lectures
About the Lectures
The George Milton Wing lectures present topics in mathematics of interest to the larger scientific community and to the general public. Read more >
Email updates
To receive email updates of upcoming Wing lectures, send a message to listserv@lists.rochester.edu with the text subscribe MATH_WING in the body of the message.
Spring 2018
Professor Keenan Crane
Carnegie Mellon University
October 17 -19, 2018
- Differential Geometry and Digital Fabrication (Public Lecture)
- Discrete Conformal Geometry I: Uniformization
- Discrete Conformal Geometry II: Beyond Uniformization
Professor Robert J. Lang
April 4-6, 2018
- From Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: The Modern Science of Origami (Public Lecture)
- Microscopic to Monumental: Origami in Wood, Bronze, and Steel (Public Lecture)
- Mathematical Algorithms for Origami Design (more specialized)
Professor Manuela Campanelli
Rochester Institute of Technology
March 5-7, 2018
- Thunder and Lightning from Cosmic Titans in the Era of Multi-Messenger Astronomy (Public Lecture)
- Getting the Thunderstorm Right: Solving Einstein’s Equations with Numerical Relativity
- Computing the Lightning from Massive Black Hole Mergers
Fall 2017
Professor Moon Duchin
Tufts University
October 2 - 3, 2017
- What do shapes have to do with fair voting? (Public lecture)
- Sprawl and other dispersion metrics
- Can you hear the shape of a billiard table?
Spring 2017
Professor Catherine Sulem, F.R.S.C
University of Toronto
April 5 - 7, 2017
- The dynamics of ocean waves (Public lecture)
- Nonlinear Waves: solitons and self-focusing
- Surface water waves over a varying bottom
Professor William Stein
University of Washington and SageMath, Inc.
February 8 - 10, 2017
- Teaching classes and doing research with collaborative web-based open-source software
- Developing open-source mathematical software as an academic: SageMath
- The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture and the Riemann hypothesis: Computing with number theoretic objects
Fall 2016
Professor Emeritus Doris Schattschneider
Moravian College
November 20 – 22
- Mathematics and the Art of M. C. Escher
References (PDF) - Lessons in Duality and Symmetry from M. C. Escher
References (PDF) - Escher’s Combinatorial Patterns
References (PDF)
The Escher exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery runs from Nov 13 through January 29.
Spring 2016
Donald Saari
University of California at Irvine
April 19 - 20
- It’s an Election Year! But Will Voters Elect Whom They Want?
- Mathematics and the Dark Mattery Mystery
Simon Levin
Princeton University
March 31 - April 1
- Cooperation in the Global Commons
- Collective Phenomena, Collective Motion, and Scaling in Ecological Systems
Fall 2015
Lani Wu and Steven Altschuler
University of California, San Francisco
October 22 - 23
- Symmetry Breaking in Yeast: Can Mathematics Provide Novel Biological Insights?
- Cellular Heterogeneity: Differences That Make a Difference in Cancer and Drug Treatment
Kevin Short
University of New Hampshire
October 7 - 8
- The Math Behind the Music
- Cupolets in Chaos, Not Verse
Spring 2015
Bernd Sturmfels
University of California, Berkeley
April 8 - 10
- Tropical Mathematics
- Beyond Linear Algebra
- Exponential Varieties
Jesse Johnson
Google, Inc. and Oklahoma State University
March 25 - 27
- Hidden Geometry in Modern (Big) Data Analysis
- From Discrete to Continuous: Inferring Scale and Topology
- Applying Geometric Intuition to Data Analysis
Fall 2014
Susan Landau
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
October 22 - 24
- What’s Significant in the NSA Revelations
- Cryptography and Privacy — and the Role for Mathematicians
Lawrence Washington
University of Maryland
September 30 - October 2
- Cannonballs, Donuts, and Secrets: An Introduction to Elliptic Curve Cryptography
- Manipulating Encrypted Data
- The Mathematics behind Quantum Computing
Spring 2014
Hubert Bray
Duke University
April 23 - 25
- From Pythagoras to Einstein: The Geometry of Space and Time
- On Dark Matter, Galaxies, and the Large-Scale Geometry of the Universe
- Black Holes and the Monotonicity of the Hawking Mass for Time Flat Surfaces
Leon Glass
McGill University
April 2 - 4
- Chaotic Music and Fractal Art: A Glimpse into the Neurophysiology of Aesthetics
- Dynamical Disease: From Theory to Practical Applications
- Evolution and Robustness in Gene Networks
Fall 2013
Gilbert Strang
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
October 14 - 15
- Online Instruction and Random Triangles
- Tridiagonal Matrices : Their Exponentials and Completions
Ken Golden
University of Utah
September 26 - 27
- Mathematics and the melting polar ice caps
- Homogenization for Sea Ice
Spring 2013
Mauro Maggioni
Duke University
April 17 - 18
- Geometry and Analysis of High-Dimensional Data
- Multiscale Methods for High-Dimensional Data and Graphs
Gunnar Carlsson
Stanford University
March 21 - 22
- The Shape of Data
- Persistent Homology with Examples
- Generalized Persistence and Mapping Data
Fall 2012
Tony DeRose
Pixar Animation Studios
October 3 - 4
- How Mathematics Has Changed Hollywood
- Wavelets in Computer Graphics
Spring 2012
Adrien Treuille
Carnegie Mellon University
March 7 - 8
- Interactive Biology
- New Approaches to Modeling and Control of Complex Dynamics
Fall 2009
Robert Ghrist
University of Pennsylvania
October 21 - 23
- Mathematical Sensors
- Euler Calculus for Data
- Algebraic Topology in the Engineering Sciences