Tue 28 Oct 14:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Xiangqian Yang (Peking University)
- Tuesday 28 October 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Number Theory Seminar; organiser: Dmitri Whitmore.
Tue 11 Nov 14:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Andrea Dotto (King's College London)
- Tuesday 11 November 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Number Theory Seminar; organiser: Dmitri Whitmore.
Fri 28 Nov 13:00: Heads or tails? Decoding the regulatory logic of body plan patterning
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Vicki Metzis, Imperial College London
- Friday 28 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
- Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: John Russell.
Fri 14 Nov 13:00: Nonsense Mediated Decay in Early Embryonic Development
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Claire Senner, Loke Centre for Trophoblast Research
- Friday 14 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Biffen Theater- Please subscribe to mailing list for link.
- Series: Developmental Biology Seminar Series; organiser: Theresa Gross-Thebing.
Fri 05 Dec 16:00: Applied mathematics in a changing world
TBC
- Speaker: David Abrahams, DAMTP, University of Cambridge
- Friday 05 December 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 07 Nov 16:00: Particle-driven flows in planetary interiors
TBC
- Speaker: Quentin Kriaa, DAMTP, University of Cambridge
- Friday 07 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 17 Oct 16:00: Some open problems in solid-Earth dynamics associated with the fluid outer core and oceans
Over the time-scales of seconds to years that are associated with processes such as seismic wave propagation, tidal deformation, and rotational variations, the Earth’s crust, mantle and inner core are viscoelastic solids, while the outer core and oceans are compressible fluids whose viscosity’s are sufficiently low as to be commonly neglected. Were it not for the presence of the fluid regions, an essentially complete mathematical description of the dynamics could be developed, and the numerical solution of the resulting equations would present no essential difficulties. In this talk I will discuss some of the remaining challenges, both theoretical and computational, that arise within these applications due to the presence of fluid regions and point to some possible methods for their resolution.
- Speaker: David Al-Attar, DES, University of Cambridge
- Friday 17 October 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 28 Nov 16:00: On bounds of conformation tensor space in planar flows of the Oldroyd B model
The response of the polymeric stress in the Oldroyd-B model to various planar flow kinematics is probed. By focusing on the two invariants of the conformation tensor©, namely the trace (tr) and determinant (det), (or, equivalently, the sum and the product of the two eigenvalues) the domain of realisable stress states are mapped. Previous theoretical bounds have been (re)proposed for 2D flows, viz det C 1 and therefore tr C 2 (det C)1/2 ((Hulsen (1988), Hu & Lelièvre (2007), Yerasi et al (2024)).
For all steady homogeneous 2D flows, including flows tending to solid body rotation, steady shearing, planar extension (and all flows in between these bounds), plus fully developed channel flow (i.e. inhomogeneous shearing) and flows next to all continuous walls without sharp corners, we show that tr C = 2 det C. Start-up shearing and planar extension are seen to approach the steady flow relationship in a differing manner, whilst large amplitude oscillatory shearing (LAOS) and extension (LAOE) exhibit rich kinematics. We find the lower theoretical bound (tr C 2 (det C)1/2) is only approached for strongly time varying extensional kinematics (LAOE with De~O(0.1)) and many other flows appear bound by tr C = 1 + det C (start up extension, LAOS ).
Limited results from more complex benchmark flows involving mixed shear and extension (steady in a Eulerian sense), including flow past a confined cylinder in a channel, the cross slot and flow in a 4:1 contraction fall within the bounds of those “simpler” kinematics. Extensions of the approach to more complicated models, such as the simplified Phan-Thien and Tanner and the FENE -P models, will also briefly be discussed. The results here may be useful in determining bounds for numerical computations or providing information regarding what rheological tests produce similar stress state responses to more complex flows.
- Speaker: Robert Poole, University of Liverpool
- Friday 28 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 14 Nov 16:00: Dynamical systems approaches to climate response and climate tipping
The currently ongoing climate change and the debate about possible measures to be taken to limit the consequences of climate change, requires to know and understand the future response of the climate system to greenhouse gas emissions. Classical measures of climate change such as the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity are inherently linear and unable to account for abrupt transitions due to (interacting) tipping elements.
In this presentation I will discuss more general notions of climate sensitivity defined on a climate attractor that can be useful in understanding the response of a climate state to changes in radiative forcing. For example, a climate state close to a tipping point will have a degenerate linear response to perturbations, which can be associated with extreme values of the climate sensitivity. While many identified tipping elements in the climate system are regional and may have no direct impact on the global mean temperature, cascades of tipping elements can potentially have an impact, initiated by the threshold of the leading tipping element in a cascade.
I will also showcase a few examples of large scale climate tipping elements and their interactions, in particular related to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and polar ice sheets.
- Speaker: Anna von der Heydt, Utrecht University
- Friday 14 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 31 Oct 16:00: Mesoscale swimming – dynamics and crowds of living critters
TBC
- Speaker: Matilda Backholm, Aalto University
- Friday 31 October 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 07 Nov 16:00: Leveraging Inductive Bias for Physically Consistent Machine Learning: Applications in Engineered Systems
Abstract:
In the field of engineered systems, the integration of machine learning has enabled the development of advanced predictive models that ensure the reliable operation of complex assets. However, challenges such as sparse, noisy, and incomplete data necessitate the integration of prior knowledge and inductive bias to improve generalization, interpretability, and robustness.
Inductive bias, the set of assumptions embedded in machine learning models, plays a crucial role in guiding these models to generalize effectively from limited training data to real-world scenarios. In engineered systems, where physical laws and domain-specific knowledge are fundamental, the use of inductive bias can significantly enhance a model’s ability to predict system behavior under diverse operating conditions. By embedding physical principles into learning algorithms, inductive bias reduces the reliance on large datasets, ensures that model predictions are physically consistent, and enhances both the generalizability and interpretability of the models.
This talk will explore various forms of inductive bias applied in engineered systems, with a particular focus on heterogenous spatio-temporal, and physics-informed graph neural networks, as well as symbolic regression with applications in virtual sensing, modelling multi-body dynamical systems and anomaly detection.
Olga Fink
Assistant Professor of Intelligent Maintenance and Operations Systems, EPFL , Lausanne
Short Bio:
Olga Fink has been assistant professor at EPFL since March 2022, heading the Intelligent Maintenance and Operations Systems (IMOS) laboratory. Olga’s research focuses on Physics-Informed Machine Learning, Multi-Modal Learning, Domain Adaptation and Generalization, and Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Maintenance and Operations of Infrastructure and Complex Assets.
Before joining EPFL faculty, Olga was assistant professor of intelligent maintenance systems at ETH Zurich from 2018 to 2022, being awarded the prestigious professorship grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Between 2014 and 2018 she was heading the research group “Smart Maintenance” at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).
Olga received her Ph.D. degree from ETH Zurich, and Diploma degree from Hamburg University of Technology. She has gained valuable industrial experience as reliability engineer with Stadler Bussnang AG and as reliability and maintenance expert with Pöyry Switzerland Ltd.
Olga is serving as an editorial board member of several prestigious journals, including Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Reliability Engineering and System Safety.
In 2019, Olga earned the distinction of being recognized as a young scientist of the World Economic Forum. In 2020, 2021, and 2024 she was honored as a young scientist of the World Laureate Forum. In 2023, she was distinguished as a fellow by the Prognostics and Health Management Society
- Speaker: Dr Olga Fink, EPFL, Switzerland
- Friday 07 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: JDB Seminar Room, CUED.
- Series: Engineering - Dynamics and Vibration Tea Time Talks; organiser: div-c.
Fri 24 Oct 16:00: Boundary layers in high-Rayleigh-number turbulent convection
Turbulent convection processes are ubiquitous in nature and technology. We study the structure of thermal and viscous boundary layers in three-dimensional Rayleigh-Bénard convection, a paradigm of these natural flows, for a range of Rayleigh numbers that spans 6 orders of magnitude by means of direct numerical simulations. The configuration is a plane layer of aspect ratio 4 with periodic boundary conditions at the sides – the configuration that comes close to the original configuration studied by Lord Rayleigh and others. Velocity fluctuations dominate the near-wall regions at all Rayleigh numbers. A global mean flow, which is a prerequisite for several theoretical models of turbulent heat transfer, is practically absent. Rather, the velocity field close to the wall can be decomposed into regions that are dominated by local, differently oriented and transient shear motion with shear-free regions in between. Thermal plumes are found to be organized in a self-similar hierarchical network, which gets coarser with increasing distance from the wall. The thermal boundary layers are marginally stable; the critical wavelength bounds the mean thermal plume spacing in the hierarchical network for all Rayleigh numbers from below. Our studies thus underline that the character of the near-wall layers in plane-layer Rayleigh-Bénard convection differs from those of canonical wall-bounded shear flows.
- Speaker: Jörg Schumacher, Technische Universität Ilmenau
- Friday 24 October 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Fri 10 Oct 16:00: Application of Open Quantum System Concepts to Internal Wave / Planetary Wave Coupling and consequences for Earth System Behaviour
We assess a prognostic formulation of triple coherence relating to energy exchange between mesoscale eddies and the internal wavefield and compare with observations from the Sargasso Sea.
We break new ground in the following ways: (1) We utilize concepts from Open Quantum Systems to arrive at the essential results presented in Muller 1976, JFM , where eddy induced internal wave-stress perturbations are damped using a nonlinear relaxation time scale approximation. The broad brush take on Open Quantum Systems is that there is a system (ray tracing), a bath (the background internal wavefield) and a system bath interaction (nonlinear relaxation). We avoid the asymptotic expansion involving small perturbations to wave phase speed that is the basis of Muller.
(2) We define the background internal wave spectrum based upon a regional characterization of the wavefield in the Sargasso Sea. This differs from the canonical description referred to as GM76 in crucial respects.
(3) We use recent theoretical work on both extreme scale separated interactions and the internal wave kinetic equation to properly define nonlinear relaxation time scales.
Agreement of the prognostic formulation with data is remarkable and is consistent with eddy-wave coupling dominating the regional internal wave energy budget, as in the diagnostic study of Polzin 2010, JPO , using data from the Local Dynamics Experiment of PolyMode III , circa 1978-1979. Extraction of eddy energy happens at the horizontal and vertical scales that characterize baroclinic instability and potential vorticity fluxes. The goodness of this effort reinforces a prior hypothesis (Polzin and Lvov 2011, RoG) that the character of the internal wavefield in the Sargasso Sea is set by this interaction, which, in turn, serves as an amplifier of tertiary energy inputs from larger vertical scales that characterize internal swell. With this knowledge and confidence, we then speculate on the role that this coupling plays in mesoscale eddy dynamics in the Southern Recirculation Gyre of the Gulf Stream. In this instance our interest is the potential enstrophy budget, in which enstrophy is the square of the perturbation potential vorticity and, as is energy, an inviscid invariant.
We argue that this nonlinear relaxation effectively provides a local eddy enstrophy damping consistent with potential vorticity flux observations from the Local Dynamics Experiment. This happens at spatial scales somewhat smaller than the energy extraction scale and locates the end of the potential enstrophy cascade in the spectral domain as the energy containing scale of the internal wavefield. We offer insight into how such speculation might acquire firmer ground by describing how to incorporate modulations of the lower bound of internal wave frequency by potential vorticity perturbations into the existing formulation. In the context of a formal WKB approximation, the current formulation stands as a ‘geometric optics’ approximation controlling system behavior whereas modulations of the waveguide are a ‘physical optics’ correction.
Regardless, the dynamical consequence is that wave-eddy coupling is responsible for the maintenance of gyre scale potential vorticity gradients that are crucial to Rossby wave propagation and Earth system behavior.
- Speaker: Kurt Polzin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Friday 10 October 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Duncan Hewitt.
Thu 23 Oct 14:30: Lonely runners and their spectra
Dirichlet’s Theorem from Diophantine approximation says that for any real number t, there is some v in {1,2,...,n} such that tv lies within 1/(n+1) of an integer. The Lonely Runner Conjecture of Wills and Cusick asserts that the constant 1/(n+1) in this theorem cannot be improved by replacing {1,2,...,n} with a different set of n nonzero real numbers. The conjecture, although now more than 50 years old, remains wide open for n larger than 7. In this talk I will describe a new approach based on the “Lonely Runner spectra” that arise when one considers the “inverse problem” for the Lonely Runner Conjecture. Based on joint work with Vikram Giri and with Vanshika Jain.
- Speaker: Noah Kravitz (Oxford)
- Thursday 23 October 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: MR12.
- Series: Combinatorics Seminar; organiser: ibl10.
Thu 23 Oct 14:30: Lonely runners and their spectra
Dirichlet’s Theorem from Diophantine approximation says that for any real number t, there is some v in {1,2,...,n} such that tv lies within 1/(n+1) of an integer. The Lonely Runner Conjecture of Wills and Cusick asserts that the constant 1/(n+1) in this theorem cannot be improved by replacing {1,2,...,n} with a different set of n nonzero real numbers. The conjecture, although now more than 50 years old, remains wide open for n larger than 7. In this talk I will describe a new approach based on the “Lonely Runner spectra” that arise when one considers the “inverse problem” for the Lonely Runner Conjecture. Based on joint work with Vikram Giri and with Vanshika Jain.
- Speaker: Noah Kravitz (Oxford)
- Thursday 23 October 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: MR12.
- Series: Combinatorics Seminar; organiser: ibl10.
Mon 03 Nov 11:00: LMB Seminar - How the physical sciences can empower biology : Applications of single molecule fluorescence to the biosciences
The capability to image single molecules has revolutionised biology. I will explain how these methods work and how we are currently applying them to study the molecular basis of neurodegenerative disease. Lastly I will describe how our early single molecule work on DNA polymerase led to the development of next generation DNA sequencing, now widely used, and the lessons that can be learnt from this experience.
- Speaker: David Klenerman, University of Cambridge
- Monday 03 November 2025, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: In person in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre (CB2 0QH) and via Zoom link https://mrc-lmb-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94171771196?pwd=LbKuOThopk72DktYw3WJWcjBOGlKgG.1.
- Series: MRC LMB Seminar Series; organiser: Scientific Meetings Co-ordinator.
Thu 13 Nov 16:30: Prof Mark Cragg, Professor in Experimental Cancer Biology, University of Southampton Note unusual time
Host: Tim Halim, CRUK
Note unusual time
- Speaker: Prof Mark Cragg, Professor in Experimental Cancer Biology, University of Southampton
- Thursday 13 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.
Wed 29 Oct 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 29 October 2025, 13:30-14:30
- Venue: MR4, CMS.
- Series: Discrete Analysis Seminar; organiser: Julia Wolf.
Wed 05 Nov 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Fulvio Paleari (CNR Istituto Nanoscienze, Modena)
- Wednesday 05 November 2025, 14:00-15:30
- Venue: Seminar Room 3, RDC.
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Tue 21 Oct 14:00: Scalable and Verifiable Carbon Accounting in Supply Chains: Towards an Integrated Framework
Companies need reliable emission data for their products and services to take effective climate action, yet obtaining it is challenging. In today’s interconnected economy, product and service carbon footprints (PCF) cannot be determined in isolation but require emission data exchange throughout supply chains. Typical cradle-to-gate accounting models require companies to include suppliers’ PCFs as scope 3 emissions, making the trustworthiness of this externally provided data critical. This calls for effective emission data verification to prevent greenwashing and ensure consistency, but current methods face fundamental limitations: they are either non-scalable (e.g., relying on individual auditors) or require access to suppliers’ confidential business information. Trust-enhancing technologies like zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs), combined with verifiable decentralized data structures, can resolve this tension by enabling verification without exposing confidential trading information. This talk introduces verifiable carbon accounting (VCA) as a framework that synthesizes multiple such technologies to enable scalable, confidentiality-preserving emission data verification. We provide an overview of recent and ongoing research, present open challenges, and discuss practical adoption strategies. While still in its infancy, VCA has the potential to transform data-driven supply chain collaboration by offering a scalable alternative to existing approaches while delivering the trustworthy emission data urgently needed to combat climate change.
Bio: Jonathan Heiss is a postdoctoral researcher at TU Berlin, Germany, and a senior research engineer at SINE Foundation. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science from TU Berlin in 2023 and holds two master’s degrees from TU Delft (computer science) and TU Berlin (ICT Innovation), both completed in 2017. He received his bachelor’s degree in information systems from TU Dresden in 2015. Jonathan’s research focuses on trustworthy distributed systems engineering, with particular emphasis on incorporating trust-enhancing technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, secure hardware, and verifiable data structures into platform-based system architectures. Target platforms include cloud systems and blockchain networks, and their synergistic combination and interplay. He employs research methods drawn from software engineering and distributed systems, including systems modeling, prototyping, and experiment- and measurement-driven approaches. Recent work applies these technologies to contexts such as decentralized federated learning and carbon accounting.
- Speaker: Jonathan Heiss (TU Berlin)
- Tuesday 21 October 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Webinar & FW11, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building..
- Series: Computer Laboratory Security Seminar; organiser: Alexandre Pauwels.