What is Simple Words?

Established by Harold Polo in 2022, the purpose of the Simple Words Seminar, now sponsored by the AMS Graduate Student Chapter here at UF, is simply to make mathematical research more accessible to undergrad and grad students. With this in mind, experts from different fields in mathematics and related disciplines (e.g., statistics, computer science, etc.) will talk about their research in “simple words” (i.e., a first year grad student should be able to understand most of a talk). Unlike a usual talk in which the speaker focuses on one specific paper/result/problem, our speakers would offer a panoramic overview of their research highlighting connections to other fields.

In addition to interesting and engaging talks, we’ll also have pizza and refreshments!

Location and Time

Meeting time: Thursday 3:00-3:50pm

Location: Little Hall

Schedule

The schedule below will be updated throughout the semester. Click here to see the list of speakers prior to the 2023-2024 academic year.

Date	Speaker	Topic	Department	Recording and Supplemental Materials
03/21/2024	Rachel Houtz	Hunting for Particles Predicted by Symmetry	Physics	video Talk starts at 2:15
02/01/2024	Sayar Karmakar		Statistics	video Talk begins at 5:30
11/30/2023	Shivani Shah	Tracing Heavy Element Production with R-Process Enhanced Stars	Astronomy	video Talk starts at 3:30
11/16/2023	Kenneth DeMason	The Calculus of Variations and Geometric Inequalities	U Texas Mathematics	video Talk starts at 7:50
11/09/2023	Miklos Bona	Pattern Avoiding Permutations	Mathematics	video
11/02/2023	Carol Demas	Mathematics in Italian Renaissance Art	Mathematics	video Slides and further reading
10/26/2023	Tracy Stepien	Mathematics + Biology = Endless Adventures	Mathematics	video
10/19/2023	Steven Miller	Integrating My Problems Away with Supercomputers Because Everyone is Bad at Math – Overview of Computational Fluid Dynamics	Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering	video
10/12/2023	Youngmin Park	The theory of coupled oscillators	Mathematics	video
09/07/2023	Henry Adams	Bridging metric geometry and topology	Mathematics	video notes on recording