BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Abigail Hickok and Mason Porter (Columbia and UCLA) DTSTART:20240506T213000Z DTEND:20240506T223000Z DTSTAMP:20260506T230505Z UID:MathandDemoc/22 DESCRIPTION:Title: Topological Data Analysis of Voting-Site Coverage\nby Abigail Hi ckok and Mason Porter (Columbia and UCLA) as part of NYU CDS Math and Demo cracy Seminar\n\n\nAbstract\nIn many cities in the United States\, it can take a very long time to go to a polling site to cast a vote in an electio n. To find such "voting deserts" in an algorithmic way\, we use persistent homology (PH)\, which is a type of topological data analysis (TDA) that a llows one to detect "holes" in data. In this talk\, we'll give an introduc tion to TDA and PH. We will then discuss our recent work on PH to detect v oting deserts and in the coverage of other resources.\n\n(Use interactive livestream for Q&A but the view-only livestream should have better sound.) \n\nAbigail Hickok is an NSF postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Math ematics at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia\, she completed a PhD in applied mathematics at UCLA in 2023\, and she received her underg raduate degree in mathematics at Princeton in 2018. Her research is on the theory and applications of geometric and topological data analysis.\n\nMa son Porter is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at University o f California\, Los Angeles (UCLA). He earned a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Caltech in 1998 and a Ph.D. from the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University in 2002. Mason held postdoctoral positions at Georgi a Tech\, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute\, and California Ins titute of Technology (Caltech). He joined as faculty at University of Oxfo rd in 2007 and moved to UCLA in 2016. Mason is a Fellow of the American Ma thematical Society\, the American Physical Society\, and the Society for I ndustrial and Applied Mathematics. In recognition of his mentoring of unde rgraduate researchers\, Mason won the 2017 Council on Undergraduate Resear ch (CUR) Faculty Mentoring Award in the Advanced Career Category in the Ma thematics and Computer Science Division. To date\, 26 students have comple ted their Ph.D. degrees under Mason's mentorship\, and Mason has also ment ored several postdocs\, more than 30 masters students\, and more than 100 undergraduate students on various research projects. Mason's research inte rests lie in theory and (rather diverse) applications of networks\, comple x systems\, and nonlinear systems.\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/MathandDemoc/22/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR