## Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - 14:05 , Location: Skiles 005 , Marta Aguilera , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
In this talk I define the braid groups, its Garside structure, and its application to solve the word and conjugacy problems. I present a braid group with $n$ strands as the  mapping class group of the disk with $n$ punctures, $\mathbb{D}^2-\{p_1\ldots p_n\}$, and a classification of surface homeomorphisms by the Nielsen Thurston theorem. I will also discuss results that require algebraic and geometric tools.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - 14:05 , Location: Skiles 005 , Bulent Tosun , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
Continuation of last week's talk
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 14:05 , Location: Skiles 005 , Bulent Tosun , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 005 , Anh Tran , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
I will define character varieties of finitely generated groups and consider some applications of them in geometry/topology.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 005 , Becca Winarski , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 006 , Meredith Casey , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - 11:00 , Location: Skiles 006 , Bulent Tosun , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 11:00 , Location: Skiles 006 , Amey Kaloti , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - 11:00 , Location: Skiles 006 , Anh Tran , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
TBA
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 11:00 , Location: Skiles 006 , Thao Vuong , Georgia Tech , Organizer:
I will give an example of transforming a knot into closed braid form using Yamada-Vogel algorithm. From this we can write down the corresponding element of the knot in the braid group. Finally, the definition of a colored Jones polynomial is given using a Yang-Baxter operator. This is a preparation for next week's talk by Anh.