Wed 03 Dec 13:30: Short character sums evaluated at homogeneous polynomials
Let p be a prime. Bounding short Dirichlet character sums is a classical problem in analytic number theory, and the celebrated work of Burgess provides nontrivial bounds for sums as short as p1/4+ε for all ε>0. In this talk, we will first survey known bounds in the original and generalized settings. Then we discuss the so-called ``Burgess method’’ and present new results that rely on bounds on the multiplicative energy of certain sets in products of finite fields.
- Speaker: Rena Chu (University of Göttingen)
- Wednesday 03 December 2025, 13:30-14:30
- Venue: MR4, CMS.
- Series: Discrete Analysis Seminar; organiser: Julia Wolf.
Wed 19 Nov 16:00: Symplectic groups and Cobordism categories
In joint work with Land and Nikolaus, we recently computed a large part of the stable cohomology of symplectic groups over the integers. In the talk I will try to explain our approach highlighting two perhaps surprising facts: That we import surgery techniques from differential topology and that it is necessary to include derived symplectic forms to facilitate this.
- Speaker: Fabian Hebestreit (Bielefeld)
- Wednesday 19 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Geometry and Topology colloquium; organiser: Oscar Randal-Williams.
Fri 21 Nov 16:00: Topological Portals to the Dark Sector
I will present the construction and phenomenology of novel portals between the Standard Model and dark sectors, arising from topological operators in chiral perturbation theory. The first example is based on a mixed Wess–Zumino–Witten term that uniquely connects three QCD pions to two dark pions, leading to a consistent framework for light thermal inelastic dark matter with suppressed direct and indirect detection, but distinctive collider signatures. The second example is a minimal model in which gauging the topological Skyrme current naturally links a QCD -like dark sector to the Standard Model, allowing a semi-annihilation process that sets the relic abundance. The purely p-wave nature of these interactions ensures compatibility with existing constraints while offering discovery prospects at colliders and beam-dump experiments.
- Speaker: Nudžeim Selimović (INFN, Padua)
- Friday 21 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR19 (Potter Room, Pavilion B), CMS.
- Series: HEP phenomenology joint Cavendish-DAMTP seminar; organiser: Terry Generet.
Metallurgical refractory lining-guided inorganic binder for stable lithium storage in silicon microparticle anodes
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE03194J, CommunicationJinwei Zhou, Siyao Wu, Yang Li, Qihou Li, Feixiang Wu
Silicon is a promising anode material for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), offering a significantly higher theoretical capacity than graphite. While nano-silicon excels, its high cost limits practicality, making silicon microparticles...
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Thu 19 Mar 16:00: Professor Joseph Sun, Cornell/ Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Bio: Joseph Sun received his PhD in immunology in 2005, having trained with Mike Bevan in CD8 + T cell memory as a graduate student at the University of Washington. As a postdoc with Lewis Lanier at UCSF from 2006-2010, he discovered that natural killer cells possess adaptive immune features including clonal expansion and long-lived memory following viral infection. He was recruited to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2010 by Jim Allison, and his lab has been interested in defining the underlying epigenetic, transcriptional, and metabolic signals that govern innate and adaptive lymphocyte responses in host defense against pathogens and cancer. Title TBC
Hosts Dr Tim Halim, CRUK / Dr Virginia Pedicord, CITIID
- Speaker: Professor Joseph Sun, Cornell/ Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Thursday 19 March 2026, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Liat Churley.
Thu 19 Mar 16:00: Professor Joseph Sun, Cornell/ Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Bio: Joseph Sun received his PhD in immunology in 2005, having trained with Mike Bevan in CD8 + T cell memory as a graduate student at the University of Washington. As a postdoc with Lewis Lanier at UCSF from 2006-2010, he discovered that natural killer cells possess adaptive immune features including clonal expansion and long-lived memory following viral infection. He was recruited to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2010 by Jim Allison, and his lab has been interested in defining the underlying epigenetic, transcriptional, and metabolic signals that govern innate and adaptive lymphocyte responses in host defense against pathogens and cancer. Title TBC
Hosts Dr Tim Halim, CRUK / Dr Virginia Pedicord, CITIID
- Speaker: Professor Joseph Sun, Cornell/ Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Thursday 19 March 2026, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Liat Churley.
Tue 18 Nov 14:30: Unirationality of conic bundles over finite fields
Many results and conjectures in arithmetic geometry deal with the existence and abundance of rational points on unirational varieties, that is, those dominated by a projective space. Over a finite field, Yanchevskiĭ asked whether a surface X is unirational when f:X->P1 is a conic bundle. In 1996, Mestre had supplied a positive answer when the cardinal of the field is much larger than the degree of the “bad locus” of f. I will present a recent result where I answer Yanchevskiĭ’s question when the “bad fibres” of f lie above rational points of P1 . As a bonus, and under the same conditions, the method we use proves that X has a unique R-equivalence class. (arXiv:2410.19686v2)
- Speaker: Elyes Boughattas (University of Rennes 1)
- Tuesday 18 November 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Number Theory Seminar; organiser: Bence Hevesi.
Thu 20 Nov 16:30: Virus‐host interactomics identify pathogen restriction factors and highlight the importance of non-canonical regulatory processes for antiviral immunity Note unusual time
This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 20 November 2025, starting at 4:30pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Prof Andreas Pichlmair, German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Munich, Germany
Title: “Virus‐host interactomics identify pathogen restriction factors and highlight the importance of non-canonical regulatory processes for antiviral immunity”
Abstract: Viral infections belong to the major causes of worldwide morbidity and mortality. Disease progression and outcome depend on pathogen-specific molecular interactions, perturbations and reactions of the immune system.
Multi-omics-based characterisation of virus-host interactions allows unprecedented insights into viral perturbations and associated immune responses. Loss-of-function analyses and intersections with genetic data from patients with increased vulnerability to viral infections facilitate the identification of host factors relevant to virus propagation. I will showcase this on the basis of varicella zoster virus–host interactions, which highlight viral engagement of E3 ligase complexes to modulate the innate immune response and patient mutations in proteins involved in cytoskeletal reorganisation for viral spread. I will also discuss recent findings on pox- and influenza viruses, which indicate that specific cellular processes, particularly housekeeping functions, are relevant for virus propagation and are mostly regulated in a non-canonical manner at the post-translational level.
Knowledge of virus-host interactions not only enables a better understanding of viral propagation and disease progression but also facilitates the identification of potential intervention strategies, which could inform future therapeutic approaches.
Host: Prof Michael Weeks, CIMR , Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
Note unusual time
- Speaker: Prof Andreas Pichlmair, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich / DZIF, German Center for Infection Research
- Thursday 20 November 2025, 16:30-17:30
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Liat Churley.
Tue 25 Nov 13:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Earl Campbell (Sheffield/Riverlane)
- Tuesday 25 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building, Room SS03.
- Series: Quantum Computing Seminar; organiser: Tom Gur.
Wed 26 Nov 13:30: Polynomial bounds for Chowla's cosine problem
Inspired by investigations of zeta functions, and old problem of Ankeny and Chowla asks whether any cosine polynomial f_A(x)=cos(a_1 x)+ ... +cos(a_n x), for an arbitrary set A={a_1,...a_n} of n distinct positive integers, must take a large negative value for some x in [0,2 pi]. Chowla later conjectured that the largest negative value of f_A is always at least of order n1/2, for any set A of size n. A refinement of Bourgain’s approach due to Ruzsa gave the previous record bound of exp(sqrt(log n)). In this talk, we discuss recent progress establishing the first polynomial bound nc with exponent c=1/7. We remark that Jin, Milojevic, Tomon and Zhang independently proved a polynomial bound with exponent c approximately 1/100 using a different method.
- Speaker: Benjamin Bedert (University of Cambridge)
- Wednesday 26 November 2025, 13:30-14:30
- Venue: MR4, CMS.
- Series: Discrete Analysis Seminar; organiser: Julia Wolf.
Nanoscale domains govern local diffusion and ageing within fused-in-sarcoma condensates
Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 14 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41565-025-02077-x
Single-molecule tracking reveals nanoscale domains within fused-in-sarcoma condensates. These nanodomains migrate to the condensate surface during ageing, seeding amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-linked fibrils, a process accelerated by small-molecule drugs.Scalable ruthenium core–shell hydrogen catalyst for efficient and robust proton-exchange membrane electrolyser
Nature Materials, Published online: 14 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02405-5
Green hydrogen production often needs Pt-based electrolysers; however, their high cost and lack of scalability hinder uptake. Here a core–shell Ru-based electrolyser is demonstrated for acidic hydrogen evolution and demonstrates a low overpotential and Pt-like stability, as well as scalability to a 200 cm2 device.Methane Photolysis to Clean Hydrogen and Carbon Nanotubes
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE02120K, Paper Open Access   This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.Geoffrey A. Ozin, Abdelaziz Gouda, Nazir Kherani, Nhat Truong Nguyen, Juan Manuel Restrepo Florez, Mohini M. Sain, Camilo Viasus, Jessica Ye, Abhinav Mohan, Otavio Augusto Titton Dias, Vijay K Tomer, Andrew Wang, Tamlyn Slocombe, Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Jiabao Shen, Mohamad Hmadeh
The transition to sustainable hydrogen production is critical to decarbonizing the global energy system and reducing reliance on carbon-intensive methods such as steam methane reforming (SMR). Methane pyrolysis has emerged...
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Mon 24 Nov 14:00: Mean curvature flows of higher codimension
Many fascinating phenomena occur when a submanifold of higher codimension is evolved by its mean curvature vector. Much of the structure of hypersurface flows is absent in this more general setting e.g. embeddedness and mean-convexity fail to be preserved. Consequently, even in the simplest cases (closed curves in 3-space, surfaces in 4-space) many basic questions remain unanswered. I will describe some of these, and present recent developments concerning singularity formation from joint works with Nguyen and Bourni—Langford.
- Speaker: Stephen Lynch (King's College London)
- Monday 24 November 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Lecture Room 2 in the gatehouse at INI.
- Series: Geometric Analysis & Partial Differential Equations seminar; organiser: Giacomo Ageno.
Mon 09 Feb 13:05: Ab Initio: Title to be confirmed
Abstract to be confirmed
Some catering will be provided
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Monday 09 February 2026, 13:05-13:55
- Venue: FW26, William Gates Building.
- Series: Technical Talks - Department of Computer Science and Technology ; organiser: Ben Karniely.
Thu 13 Nov 15:30: Reservoirs of venereal diseases: women and medico-moral discourses in Idi Amin's Uganda CANCELLED
For many Ugandans, Idi Amin’s rule is an unfinished chapter that continues to shape political discourse about the way the state relates to its citizens. Despite being one of the most documented figures in history, sensationalized media portrayals and limited archival sources have obscured many facets of his rule. Scholarship has often focused on high-profile events like the expulsion of Asians but like many authoritarian leaders, Amin was deeply invested in imposing moral order, enacting a series of decrees between 1971 and 1977 which aimed to reform the behavior of Ugandans. This ‘anti-immorality’ campaign led to the arrest, imprisonment, and forced treatment of many Ugandans, predominantly women. The campaign garnered support from unexpected places, including medical professionals, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens. In this talk, I examine the anti-venereal disease decree, which Amin enacted in 1977 to address what he and medics believed was a venereal disease epidemic caused by immorality. I examine the campaign against venereal diseases as a political, medico-moral, and epidemiological project, socially constructed, but with real consequences for women. This campaign found support among medical and public health officials whose agendas intersected with moral reform efforts, framing venereal diseases through a gendered moral lens, echoing colonial precedents.
CANCELLED
- Speaker: Doreen Kembabazi (Adyeeri) (University of Warwick)
- Thursday 13 November 2025, 15:30-17:00
- Venue: Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
- Series: Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science; organiser: Ahmad Elabbar.
Tue 18 Nov 15:00: Introducing BoltzGen: Toward Universal Binder Design This talk is only in presence
BoltzGen is a new generative model for designing protein and peptides of any modality to bind a wide range of biomolecular targets. It unifies design and structure prediction, resulting in a single model that also achieves state-of-the-art folding performance. BoltzGen’s generation process can be controlled with a flexible design specification language over covalent bonds, structure constraints, binding sites, and more. BoltzGen was developed at MIT and experimentally validated in a large-scale distributed effort involving multiple academic and industry labs. These groups independently validated designed nanobodies, minibinders, peptides, and cyclic peptides against diverse and novel targets such as small molecules, peptides, and proteins with disordered regions, with robust experimental validation including functional readouts in live cells. We explicitly focus our experimental validation on targets that are highly dissimilar to any proteins for which bound structures exist – more faithfully mirroring a real discovery campaign. BoltzGen, like Boltz-1 and Boltz-2, is open source under MIT license and freely available for unrestricted academic and commercial use, including data, model weights, training, and inference code.
https://github.com/HannesStark/boltzgen
This talk is only in presence
- Speaker: Hannes Stärk, PhD student at MIT
- Tuesday 18 November 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building, Lecture Theatre 1.
- Series: Artificial Intelligence Research Group Talks (Computer Laboratory); organiser: Pietro Lio.
Wed 26 Nov 11:45: Cambridge MedAI Seminar - November 2025
Join us for the Cambridge AI in Medicine Seminar Series, hosted by the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and the Department of Radiology at Addenbrooke’s. This series brings together leading experts to explore cutting-edge AI applications in healthcare—from disease diagnosis to drug discovery. It’s a unique opportunity for researchers, practitioners, and students to stay at the forefront of AI innovations and engage in discussions shaping the future of AI in healthcare.
This month’s seminar will be held on Wednesday 26 November 2025, 12-1pm at the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (Main Lecture Theatre), University of Cambridge and streamed online via Zoom. A light lunch from Aromi will be served from 11:45. The event will feature the following talks:
LUMEN – A deep learning pipeline for analysis of the 3D morphology of the cerebral lenticulostriate arteries from time-of-flight 7T MRI – Rui Li, PhD student, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge
Rui Li is a PhD student at the Stroke Research Group, led by Professor Hugh Markus, in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research focuses on applying machine learning to neuroimage analysis in cerebral small vessel disease research. Specifically, her work involves developing methods for the segmentation and quantification of the morphology of small cerebral perforating arteries from 7T MRI , and applying machine learning to dementia prediction in cerebral small vessel disease from multimodal MRI . Prior to her PhD, she studied information engineering and bioengineering in the Department of Engineering at Cambridge.
Abstract: The lenticulostriate arteries (LSAs) supply critical subcortical brain structures and are affected in cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). Changes in their morphology are linked to cardiovascular risk factors and may indicate early pathology. 7T Time-of-Flight MR angiography (TOF-MRA) enables clear LSA visualisation. We aimed to develop a semi-automated pipeline for quantifying 3D LSA morphology from 7T TOF -MRA in CSVD patients.
We used data from a local 7T CSVD study to create a pipeline, LUMEN , comprising two stages: vessel segmentation and LSA quantification. For segmentation, we fine-tuned a deep learning model, DS6 , and compared it against nnU-Net and a Frangi-filter pipeline, MSFDF . For quantification, centrelines of LSAs within basal ganglia were extracted to compute branch counts, length, tortuosity, and maximum curvature. This pipeline was applied to 69 subjects, with results compared to traditional analysis measuring LSA morphology on 2D coronal maximum intensity projection (MIP) images.
For vessel segmentation, fine-tuned DS6 achieved the highest test Dice score (0.814±0.029) and sensitivity, whereas nnU-Net achieved the best balanced average Hausdorff distance and precision. Visual inspection confirmed that DS6 was most sensitive in detecting LSAs with weak signals. Across 69 subjects, the pipeline with DS6 identified 23.5 ± 8.5 LSA branches. Branch length inside the basal ganglia was 26.4 ± 3.5 mm, and tortuosity was 1.5 ± 0.1. Extracted LSA metrics from 2D MIP analysis and our 3D analysis showed fair-to-moderate correlations. Outliers highlighted the added value of 3D analysis.
This open-source deep-learning-based pipeline offers a validated tool quantifying 3D LSA morphology in CSVD patients from 7T-TOF-MRA for clinical research.
Multimodal Learning to Predict Progression in Barrett’s Oesophagus – Rehan Zuberi, PhD student, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge
Rehan Zuberi is a PhD researcher at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute in the Markowetz Lab. His work focuses on developing machine learning architectures and applying them to cancer research, with an emphasis on building clinically relevant multimodal models for early detection of disease.
Abstract: Oesophageal cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, with most patients not surviving beyond five years. Early detection is therefore critical, but current surveillance methods often miss subtle progression signals. This talk will present a multimodal deep learning framework that integrates whole slide histopathology features with genomic copy number variation (CNV) data to predict progression in Barrett’s oesophagus. We use weakly supervised multiple instance learning for image representation and an intermediate fusion architecture to combine modalities. I will discuss dataset composition, fusion strategies, and early performance benchmarks, as well as the unique signal captured beyond unimodal baselines. I will also outline future work exploring additional modalities such as clinical and longitudinal data. This approach aims to improve risk stratification and enable earlier intervention for patients at high risk of progression.
This is a hybrid event so you can also join via Zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/99050467573?pwd=UE5OdFdTSFdZeUtIcU1DbXpmdlNGZz09
Meeting ID: 990 5046 7573 and Passcode: 617729
We look forward to your participation! If you are interested in getting involved and presenting your work, please email Ines Machado at im549@cam.ac.uk
For more information about this seminar series, see: https://www.integratedcancermedicine.org/research/cambridge-medai-seminar-series/
- Speaker: Rui Li and Rehan Zuberi
- Wednesday 26 November 2025, 11:45-13:00
- Venue: Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (Main Lecture Theatre), University of Cambridge.
- Series: Cambridge MedAI Seminar Series; organiser: Hannah Clayton.
Metal–organic frameworks for the future
Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 13 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41565-025-02095-9
Metal–organic frameworks are transitioning from laboratory curiosity to industrially viable materials driven by extensive community efforts to enhance their functionality and stability, and by breakthroughs in large-scale manufacturing.Interface engineering in triple-junction perovskite solar cells
Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 13 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41565-025-02051-7
An optimized gold nanolayer drives record efficiency in perovskite triple-junction solar cells, bringing laboratory performance closer to theoretical limits.