Support

We expect to have a limited amount of support for the conference. The form of the support is that, the conference will book hotel rooms for one or two nights for participants who request and receive financial aid. (Graduate students and postdocs may need to share a double room.) In addition, there is a small amount of support for travel expenses, (up to $200 per person), for which we will give priority to graduate students and recent Ph.Ds with contributed talks. If you are applying for the travel support, please indicate the estimated amount of airfare.
The application for support, as well as submission of contributed talks, should be done through the on-line registration form.

Plenary Speakers

• Boris Bukh , Carnegie Mellon University.
  • Title: + Almost uniform distribution in the cube and a problem of Erdös
    What is the "most uniformly distributed" set in [0,1]^d? Historically, this question has been motivated both by applications to numerical algorithms, and by questions of diophantine approximation in number theory. In this talk, I will tell about a new constructions of well-distributed points in the cube, and their link to an old problem of Erd\oumls about points in convex position.
• Sam F. Hopkins, Howard University
  • Title: + Upho posets
    A partially ordered set is called upper homogeneous, or “upho,” if every principal order filter is isomorphic to the whole poset. This class of fractal-like posets was recently introduced by Stanley. Our first observation is that the rank generating function of a (finite type N-graded) upho poset is the reciprocal of its characteristic generating function. This means that each upho lattice has associated to it a finite graded lattice, called its core, that determines its rank generating function. With an eye towards classifying upho lattices, we investigate which finite graded lattices arise as cores, providing both positive and negative results. Our overall goal for this talk is to advertise upho posets, and especially upho lattices, which we believe are a natural and rich class of posets deserving of further attention. Essentially no background knowledge will be assumed, and we also hope to highlight several open problems.
• Jeremy Martin, University of Kansas
  • Title: + Chromatic symmetric functions and polynomial invariants of trees
    Richard Stanley asked in 1995 whether a tree is determined up to isomorphism by its chromatic symmetric function. This question remains unanswered and frequently keeps the speaker awake at night. Our approach to understanding the strength of the chromatic symmetric function as an invariant is to ask what other information is encoded in it. First, we prove Crew’s conjecture that the chromatic symmetric function of a tree determines its generalized degree sequence, which enumerates vertex subsets by cardinality and the numbers of internal and external edges. Second, we prove that the restriction of the generalized degree sequence to subtrees contains exactly the same information as the subtree polynomial, which enumerates subtrees by cardinality and number of leaves. Third, we construct arbitrarily large families of trees sharing the same subtree polynomial, proving and generalizing a conjecture of Eisenstat and Gordon. This is joint work with José Aliste-Prieto, Jennifer Wagner, and José Zamora.
• Jessica Striker, North Dakota State University
  • Title: + Promotion and a rotating web of mysteries
    Many combinatorial objects with strikingly good enumerative formulae also have remarkable dynamical behavior and underlying algebraic structure. In this talk, we consider the promotion action on rectangular tableaux (of several kinds with shapes of at most 4 rows OR at most 2 columns), and explain its small, predictable order by reinterpreting promotion as a rotation in disguise. We show how the search for this visual explanation of combinatorial dynamics led to the solution of an algebraic problem involving web bases. This framework includes several unexpected combinatorial objects of interest: alternating sign matrices, plane partitions, and the Tamari lattice. This talk is based on joint work with Christian Gaetz, Stephan Pfannerer, Oliver Pechenik, and Joshua Swanson as well as with Rebecca Patrias and Oliver Pechenik.
• Fan Wei, Duke University
  Title: + Graph homomorphism density inequalities
  Graph limits is a recently developed powerful theory in studying graphs from a continuous perspective. In this talk, we will show it is undecidable to prove general inequalities of homomorphism densities into (edge weighted) graphs. Then I will show how the perspective of graph limits helps with graph homomorphism inequalities and how to make advances in a common theme in extremal combinatorics: when does randomness give nearly optimal bounds?

Schedule and Abstracts (Central Standard Time)

✽ Program

All the academic activities will be held on the first floop of Blocker Building on the Texas A&M Campus. This is where the Math Dept locates.
The registration and break room are at BLOC 140/141.
The plenary talks will be given in BLOC 169
For contributed talks, session A is at BLOC 169 and session B is at BLOC 164.
Here is an interactive campus map .

Program to be added

Location, Transportation, Parking

All the activities will be held at the Blocker Building on the campus of Texas A&M University.

The Northside Garage (NSG) is located directly across from the Blocker Building (BLOC) and has space for visitor parking. (One needs to pay if park here.) During the weekend, you can also park for free at any un-reserved space in a numbered lot, such as Lot 47 and Lot 51. (On the northwest side of the campus, near Univesity Drive and the Bon Fair Memorial)

The interactive campus map also lists available parking lots. Move to the rigth side to see the parking lots 47 and 51.

For details, see Special Parking Regulations at TAMU

Night and weekend parking is available 5 pm to 6 am for valid permit holders in unrestricted/unnumbered spaces in most lots except lots 30, 40, 72, 99 and 122. Night and weekend parking at West Campus Garage begins at 4pm.

No permit is required in unrestricted or plain marked spaces on Saturday, Sunday, or days when the University is officially closed. Exceptions include Lot 30, 40, 72, 99, 122, the golf lot, special event parking and athletic events. Notifications are posted at the entrance to the lot(s) affected during these events.

Texas A&M University is located in College Station, Texas, which by automobile lies about 1 hour and 30 minutes northwest of Houston, 1 hour and 45 minutes east of Austin, and 3 hours south of Dallas. Easterwood Airport in College Station is served by American Airlines (connecting to Dallas). There is also a shuttle service from Bush Intercontinental Airport and Hobby Airport in Houston and a shuttle service from Austin-Bergstrom Airport.