Adaptive Regulation through Model-Observation Mismatch: From Process Control to Cognitive Neurorobotics

October 8 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026

Henrique Oyama (Postdoctoral Researcher, Cognitive Neurorobotics Research Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST))

Adaptive behavior requires biological and artificial systems to respond when their internal models no longer match what they observe. How can such discrepancies be used not only to correct predictions, but also to regulate how a system interacts with its environment? In this talk, I will explore this question across two research directions spanning process control and cognitive neurorobotics. First, I will introduce a model predictive control framework in which a controller actively guides a nonlinear process toward informative conditions to distinguish among competing models while maintaining safe operation. I will then move to cognitive neurorobotics, where brain-inspired computational principles are used to investigate perception, prediction, and action in embodied artificial agents. In physical human-robot interaction, I will show how a predictive-coding-inspired recurrent neural network enables a humanoid robot to regulate the balance between its learned expectations and sensory information arising from human-guided movements. In particular, recent mismatches between sensory observations and the robot's internal model are used to regulate how strongly it relies on its learned dynamics or accommodates ongoing interaction. Together, these studies illustrate how model-observation mismatch can provide a general signal for adaptive regulation, connecting ideas from control engineering, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and embodied cognition.

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Main Research Building / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Strong Corks: Applications and Construction

October 2 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:30, 2026

Tateaki Mukohara (Master's Student, Graduate School of Information Science, The University of Osaka)

Four-dimensional topology exhibits remarkable phenomena that are quite different from those in other dimensions. Understanding exotic phenomena in dimension four is one of the central problems in the field, but much remains mysterious. Corks are fundamental objects closely related to various exotic phenomena in dimension four. In recent years, developments in Floer theory have led to increasing interest in the study of strong corks. In this talk, I will first explain why strong corks are important, focusing on their applications to knot theory. I will then explain Floer-theoretic methods for detecting strong corks. Finally, I will present new infinite families of strong corks constructed in my work (arXiv:2601.02230) using equivariant Kirby calculus.

Venue: via Zoom / #359, 3F, Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Evolutionary Dynamics and Information Theory

October 1 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Marc Harper (Data Scientist, Google Inc., USA)

We'll discuss some of the history of connections among information theory, evolutionary dynamics, and statistical inference, drawing analogies between concepts and results in these fields, for example between the replicator equation (a model of natural selection) and Bayesian inference. Time permitting, we'll continue with generalizations to finite populations with mutation and/or variations including an analogy between epigenetics from biological evolution and momentum from machine learning.

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Coexistence and hybridization in plant communities - lessons from mediterranean shrublands

October 1 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026

Carmelo Gómez Martínez (Postdoctoral Researcher, Global Change Research Institute, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)

This talk explores how two closely related Mediterranean shrubs, the rockroses Cistus ladanifer and Cistus laurifolius, share the same habitat despite being direct competitors for soil, light and pollinators. Hybridization – the natural interbreeding of two related species – often produces offspring that blend both parents' traits, and is surprisingly common in plants, including the Cistus genus. Fieldwork across Spain's Iberian Central System combining genomics, flowering timing and soil experiments shows that no single factor by itself – not genetics, climate or soil – fully explains these dynamics. The next step is to study how pollination shapes hybridization, and for that, we are developing and agent-based model that simulates bee foraging across realistic landscapes to predict new hybrid outcomes under environmental change.

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359 / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Mathematical Application Research Team Meeting #19

September 28 (Mon) 14:00 - 15:15, 2026

Antoine Diez (Research Scientist, Mathematical Application Research Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

In this meeting, Antoine Diez will give a talk on his work in progress regarding "Scaling limits for active Laguerre tessellations."

Venue: #359, Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

121st Data Assimilation and Prediction Science Seminar

September 28 (Mon) 14:00 - 16:00, 2026

Shunji Kotsuki

Title: "Exploring Live Cameras for Actionable Weather Prediction: Recent Studies with Chiba University’s BAECAST Network" Abstract: Numerical weather prediction has advanced substantially through improvements in observing technologies, data assimilation methods, and numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. More recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly been used to develop surrogates for NWP models and to advance nonlinear and non-Gaussian data assimilation. These developments are expected to enable more effective use of large volumes of observational data, including satellite observations. To further improve weather forecast accuracy, it is important not only to refine data assimilation methods and NWP models but also to explore new sources of observations. Our research focuses on the vast amounts of data generated by live-streaming cameras already deployed in everyday settings. Many of these cameras capture aspects of weather conditions, and harnessing this information could contribute to further improvements in weather prediction. This talk will present several studies on weather forecasting and diagnostics using live-streaming cameras installed at Chiba University. I will introduce BAECAST, an approach to visual weather forecasting, and discuss which meteorological variables can be retrieved from live-camera imagery. I will also present our efforts to transform the nature of weather forecasts using live-camera data using a conditional diffusion model.

Venue: Hybrid Format (RIKEN R-CCS room C107 and Zoom) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Foundations of Quantum Programming Mini-Workshop & Contributed Talks

September 28 (Mon) - October 2 (Fri) 2026

Mingsheng Ying (Professor, University of Technology Sydney, Australia)
Hiroyuki Ochiai (Professor, Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University)
Jianjun Zhao (Professor, Kyushu University)
Minh Canh Do (Instructor, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Venue: Room C502, West Zone 1 Building D, Ito Campus, Kyushu University, SUURI-COOL (Kyushu) (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Foundations of Quantum Programming Lecture

September 28 (Mon) - October 2 (Fri) 2026

Mingsheng Ying (Professor, University of Technology Sydney, Australia)

Lecture Professor Mingsheng Ying is internationally recognised for his contributions to quantum computing, quantum programming, and quantum software verification. He is a Distinguished Professor at the UTS Centre for Quantum Software and Information at the University of Technology Sydney. His research interests include quantum computation, programming language theory, quantum program semantics, verification, and the foundations of quantum software. Professor Ying is Co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing and has served in editorial roles for several leading journals and conferences. Abstract Recent advances in quantum hardware have brought the field from prototype devices to increasingly practical platforms. To fully realise the potential of quantum computing, quantum programming and software-development technologies will play a crucial role. This lecture series systematically introduces the theoretical foundations of quantum programming, including operational and denotational semantics, quantum program logics with an emphasis on quantum Hoare logic, verification and analysis of quantum programs, and quantum recursive programming. The lectures will also discuss open problems that may inspire future research in quantum programming.

Venue: Room C502, West Zone 1 Building D, Ito Campus, Kyushu University, SUURI-COOL (Kyushu) (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

7-Branes in Non-SUSY String Theory

September 24 (Thu) 15:00 - 17:00, 2026

Masashi Kawahira (Program-Specific Researcher, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)

7-branes play an important role in probing the strongly coupled regime of type IIB superstring theory. In this talk, we discuss whether analogous objects exist in type 0B string theory, which can be regarded as a non-supersymmetric counterpart of type IIB superstring theory. Specifically, we investigate their existence based on the self-duality group of type 0B string theory recently proposed by Baykara, Dudas, and Vafa. This talk is based on joint work with Hiroki Wada (Tohoku University) and Naoto Kan (The University of Osaka), arXiv:2608.16522 [hep-th].

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Workshop on Gestalt

September 24 (Thu) - 30 (Wed) 2026

Ko Aoki (Postdoc, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Note. The lectures will be given in Japanese. This workshop will be jointly organized by RIKEN AIP. During this five-day workshop, we will hold a learning seminar and intensive lectures on gestalt theory, which was recently developed by Scholze and Stefanich. Gestalt theory is a new geometric framework that unifies various derived analytic geometry and higher sheaf theory, building on the foundations of higher and derived category theory. At this event, we will host Ko Aoki, who has contributed to the foundations and development of the theory, for the intensive lecture session. During the first three days of the workshop, we will feature tutorial lecture sessions, presented by the participants. All lectures will be given in Japanese, with the aim of promoting the dissemination and development of gestalt theory in Japan.

Venue: Yagami Campus, Keio University

Event Official Language: Japanese

Quantum Information: Entanglement of Mathematics & Physics

September 21 (Mon) - 23 (Wed) 2026

This workshop brings together mathematicians and physicists to explore the deep connections among quantum information, mathematics, and physics. Topics span quantum gravity, condensed matter physics, quantum computing, and quantum error correction, with an emphasis on the mathematical structures that underlie entanglement and quantum information across these fields. The program is designed to foster genuine cross-disciplinary dialogue, allowing ample time for discussion alongside formal talks. [Invited speakers] Akira Furusaki (RIKEN CEMS/iTHEMS) Marcel Franz (UBC / SBQMI) Ching-Kai Chiu (iTHEMS) Jasmin Bedow (UBC) Max McGinley (UBC) Yosuke Kubota (Kyoto University) Shunji Matsuura (RIKEN iTHEMS) Bartosz Regula (RIKEN RQC) Ryuji Takagi (University of Tokyo) Sisi Zhou (Perimeter Institute) Olivia Di Matteo (UBC / SBQMI) Daochen Wang (UBC Computer Science) Polina Feldmann (UBC) Masazumi Honda (RIKEN iTHEMS) Yasuyuki Kawahigashi (RIKEN iTHEMS) Carolyn Zhang (UBC) Masahito Yamazaki (Kavli IPMU, University of Tokyo) Aswin Parayil Mana (University of Tokyo) Alex May (Perimeter Institute) Masamichi Miyaji (RIKEN iTHEMS) Mark Van Raamsdonk (UBC Physics & Astronomy)

Venue: University of British Colombia / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Tannaka duality for spectral sheaves on compact Hausdorff spaces

September 17 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:30, 2026

Ko Aoki (Postdoc, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Tannaka duality asks to what extent a geometric object can be recovered from a category naturally associated with it. In this talk, the geometric objects are topological spaces, and the associated categories are their categories of sheaves of spectra. I showed that, for compact Hausdorff spaces X and Y, every colimit-preserving symmetric monoidal functor from Shv(X; Sp) to Shv(Y; Sp) arises uniquely from a continuous map from Y to X, where Shv(X; Sp) denotes the (∞, 1)-category of sheaves of spectra on X. The main ingredient is an adjunction between the construction of sheaves and a new variant of the smashing spectrum. I will also discuss variants of this machinery to broader classes of spaces, including ongoing work on toposes.

Venue: via Zoom / Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Primtive form of singularity and mirror symmetry

September 11 (Fri) 15:30 - 17:30, 2026

Zhe Wang (Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

In 1980s, K. Saito introduced the primitive forms in his study of periods as to generalize the elliptic period integral theory to higher dimensions. An important consequence was that there exists a flat structure on the space of universal unfolding of a singularity. Later after Witten proposed his famous conjecture relating the intersection theory on moduli space to the integrable hierarchy, this flat structure was re-discovered by Dubrovin, and nowadays it is referred as a Frobenius mafniold structure. Frobenius mafniolds provide a convenient tool for formulating the mirror symmetry, which was a special type of duality among string theories orginally studied by physicits. In this talk, I will explain the related constructions, and show by examples how the study of primitive forms gives prediction of geometric quantities such as Gromov-Witten invariants.

Venue: #359, 3F, Seminar Room #359 / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Making robust reionisation 21 cm signal predictions with C21LRT

September 11 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:15, 2026

Qin Han (JSPS International Research Fellow, Shibaura Institute of Technology)

The redshifted 21 cm line signal is a unique probe for the Epoch of Reionisation by tracking the evolution of the averaged intergalactic medium properties as well as their fluctuations, enabling tomographic studies. Accurate modelling of the 21 cm global and power spectrum signals is crucial for interpreting measurements from current and forthcoming 21 cm experiments. Theoretical predictions usually post-process reionisation simulations with optical depth approximation, which treats local line broadening and peculiar velocities approximately and often leads to divergences due to its velocity gradient term. I will present our cosmological 21 cm line radiative transfer (C21LRT) formulation which resolve these issues naturally. I will compare the 21-cm signals calculated with C21LRT and the conventional optical depth method, and highlight the need to fully quantify the uncertainties of using the optical depth method for exploring the 21-cm signals associated from various possible reionisation scenarios.

Venue: Hybrid Format (2F #220 and Zoom), Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English

Magic state distillation and cultivation #2

September 10 (Thu) 13:30 - 17:00, 2026

Yutaka Hirano (Research Scientist, Nanofiber Quantum Technologies)

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

Magic state distillation and cultivation #1

September 10 (Thu) 10:30 - 12:00, 2026

Yutaka Hirano (Research Scientist, Nanofiber Quantum Technologies)

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

How fungi generate one of the highest pressures in biology: the cell wall as a living nanoporous material

September 7 (Mon) 14:00 - 15:00, 2026

Naoyoshi Kumakura (Senior Research Scientist, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS))

Many devastating crop diseases, including anthracnose and rice blast, begin when a fungal pathogen builds a single infection cell called an appressorium. This single cell generates up to ~8 megapascals of turgor pressure (roughly 40 times a car tire’s air pressure), among the highest documented in any living organism, to physically rupture the plant's tough surface. This pressure arises because the cell wall acts as a semipermeable membrane, retaining internal osmolytes such as glycerol while allowing water to pass. What confers this selective permeability had remained unknown for decades: melanin was long assumed responsible, but turgor still forms in melanin-deficient mutants. Using genome editing and direct biochemical analysis of these fungi, we identified two enzymes, PKS2 and PBG13, that synthesize a novel polymer from dihydroxyhexanoic acid (DHHA), which narrows cell-wall pore size at the nanometer scale and is required for turgor generation (Kumakura* et al., Science, 2026). I will frame this system as a living adaptive porous material and discuss questions open to mathematical and physical modeling, including how pore geometry sets the limits of selective permeability.

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

SNP School 2026

September 7 (Mon) - 11 (Fri) 2026

We are pleased to announce that the SNP School 2026 will be held at Aobayama Campus, Tohoku University, from 7th to 11th, September, 2026. This is the 15th of the series which has been held every year since 2012. The school provides lectures that cover subjects from basics to the frontiers of strangeness nuclear physics as well as other related fields such as astrophysics, atomic physics, etc. Lecturers are invited both from theoretical or experimental physics, and their materials are prepared to be useful to students and also to researchers who would have wider interests. For more details, please see the related link.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

The 11th Intensive Lectures on Quantum Gravity

September 7 (Mon) - 9 (Wed) 2026

Yasuyuki Hatsuda (Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Rikkyo University)

In the 11th event of the Intensive Lecture Series, organized by the Quantum Gravity Gatherings (QGG) study group at RIKEN iTHEMS, we will have Prof. Yasuyuki Hatsuda from Rikkyo University, who will deliver a three-day lecture series on the analytic methods in black hole perturbation theory. Black hole perturbation theory plays a very important role in the developments of modern physics. For instance, in gravitational wave astronomy, it can describe the ringdown phase during the merger events of binary black holes. As the frequency and decay rate of each quasinormal mode are unique to the remnant black hole, one can test extreme-gravity physics by extracting those modes from the ringdown signal. In addition, the computation of black hole quasinormal modes based on black hole perturbation theory has relations connecting to conformal field theories and even to the computations of tidal Love numbers. With the broad applications, we expect this lecture series to provide fresh perspectives to researchers across a wide range of fields and to inspire new directions in their own research. The lectures will be delivered in a blackboard-style format (in English), designed to foster interaction, active participation, and in-depth Q&A discussions. In addition, short talk sessions will be held, giving participants the opportunity to present briefly on topics of their choice. Through this informal and dynamic setting, we hope to spark active interactions among participants and create an environment where ideas can be shared openly and enthusiastically. This event will take place in person only. Target audience: Senior scholars, early-career researchers, and students are all warmly welcome. Registration deadline: July 31, 2026

Venue: #435-437, 4F, Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English