Monday, November 22, 13:30– 15:00 Brownian Motion
Monday, November 25, 13:30– 15:00 NEW WG Seminar
Friday, November 26, 12:30- Coffee Meeting

Our colleague Jason Chang moves on to a new carrier at LinkedIn as of November 14th. We all will miss him and wish him the best of luck in his latest endeavor. Here is a message from Jason:

It was truly a pleasure to be part of iTHEMS.
I have matured so much during this time through all the opportunities that have been made available to me because of how much iTHEMS has supported me in the decisions that I made.
I certainly will miss everyone as well.
I will move on to a data science position at LinkedIn.
If anyone from iTHEMS is curious or has interest in transitioning to some industry position especially around the Bay Area, feel free to reach out to me.
I will be more than happy to help with the process and introduce the person to the right recruiters as well.
I believe I can convince LinkedIn to let me continue research in quantum algorithms for around 1 day / week as well.
So perhaps in the end, I am not going away as far as one might think.
The world is quite small after all.
My direct manager at LinkedIn was Aida’s postdoc when I was her graduate student.
One never knows which doors life decides to open.

Kind Regards,
Jason

On Nov 4th 2021, Dr. Takaharu Mori from Molecular Science Lab (Sugita Lab), RIKEN gave an online talk, entitled, "Protein structure modeling from cryo-electron microscopy data". He talked about the theoretical method to determine three-dimensional structures of biomolecules at near-atomic resolution, using a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and also microscopy data. In addition, he showed their combined approach of coarse-grained model and all-atom model. According to him, Bayesian inference and machine learning are useful for the determination of biomolecule's 3D structure which can be the seeds of future collaborations between us. During the seminar, there were many discussions with iTHEMS members especially about the theoretical method to use recent microscopy data. We enjoyed his talk very much. Thanks, Mori-san!

Reported by Gen Kurosawa

Professor Conan Leung gave an introductory talk to mirror symmetry. He first started with the discussion on the sum of inner angles of a triangle to illustrate the difference between our familiar Euclidean spaces and spaces with nontrivial curvature. He then introduced the notion of complex numbers and how it is related to solving polynomial equations in algebra. Recalling that gravity theory and quantum theory having very different nature of behaviour, he introduced super string theory as a potential unification of these two theories and its great impact to the study of modern mathematics, e.g. enumerative geometry, geometry of special holonomy. Finally he introduced mirror symmetry and how to understand it from the perspective of Fourier transform following a proposal of Strominger, Yau and Zaslow.

Reported by Yalong Cao

On Nov 11th 2021, Prof. Jae Kyoung Kim from KAIST, South Korea gave an online talk at iTHEMS. The title of the talk is “Toward mathematical medicine: development of a new drug and digital medicine for sleep disorders”. In the seminar, Dr. Kim talked about mathematical model (e.g. IBM) of our daily rhythms when environment within cells is crowded by lipids, and its implication for obesity. In addition, he showed their successful collaboration with Pfizer and Samsung medical center. The talk thrilled us very much. There were many intensive discussions with iTHEMS members and also experimental biologists from outside. Thanks, Jae!

Reported by Gen Kurosawa

Professor Todor Milanov gave a talk on his recent research on K-theoretic GW theory. He first recalled the definition of Gromov-Witten invariants and its K-theoretic generalization. Then he mentioned how to use genus 0 GW invariants to define quantum product on the usual cohomology group of a symplectic manifold. Such formulation has deep connection to integrable systems. He then introduced his research results, including a proof of the fact that small J-function in quantum cohomology of a Fano manifold can be obtained as a limit q -->1 of the small J-function in quantum K-theory.

Reported by Yalong Cao

Naoto Nagaosa (Tokyo/RIKEN) gave a talk on "Geometry in optical responses of quantum materials." Geometry and topology provide new insight into optical responses of solids and are of interdisciplinary interest in physics. After an excellent review on this topic made over the past decade, Naoto mainly discussed (i) shift current in noncentrosymmetric quantum materials driven by Berry phases, and (ii) Riemannian geometry in nonlinear optical responses. About 50 physicists from various fields have joined the seminar and enjoyed fruitful discussions during and after the seminar.

Reported by Hidetoshi Taya

Title: Evaluation of origin of the driving force for loop formation in a chromatin fiber
Author: Hiroshi Yokota, Masashi Tachikawa
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.08881v1

Title: Impacts of Jets and Winds From Primordial Black Holes
Author: Volodymyr Takhistov, Philip Lu, Kohta Murase, Yoshiyuki Inoue, Graciela B. Gelmini
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.08699v1

Title: Generalized harmonic analysis reveals a frequency modulated timer regulates mammalian hibernation
Author: Shingo Gibo, Yoshifumi Yamaguchi, Gen Kurosawa
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.12.468369

Title: Nucleon Axial Form Factor from Domain Wall on HISQ
Author: Aaron S. Meyer, Evan Berkowitz, Chris Bouchard, Chia Cheng Chang, M. A. Clark, Ben Hörz, Dean Howarth, Christopher Körber, Henry Monge-Camacho, Amy Nicholson, Enrico Rinaldi, Pavlos Vranas, André Walker-Loud
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06333v1

Title: Emergence of Hilbert Space Fragmentation in Ising Models with a Weak Transverse Field
Author: Atsuki Yoshinaga, Hideaki Hakoshima, Takashi Imoto, Yuichiro Matsuzaki, Ryusuke Hamazaki
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.05586v1