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The Bridges conference is being held at Aalto University on 1–5 August 2020. The event will be hosted by Aalto University, the University of Helsinki and the University of the Arts Helsinki. The objective of the conference is to strengthen connection between mathematics and music, architecture and culture.
The conference brings together an interdisciplinary group of mathematicians, educators, and creators. Bridges typically includes talks, presentations, and workshops, as well as a fashion show, a public family day and arts-focused performances.
‘Mathematics can enrich the fields of art and vice versa. Participants from the university and from outside of it can contribute to all the fields represented in the conference, as long as the connection to mathematics is maintained’, says Kirsi Peltonen, Senior University Lecturer in mathematics at Aalto University and the coordinator of the conference.
Anyone willing to participate in the conference art exhibition or short film festival can submit their artwork or short film along with a short covering note for review. All work will be peer-reviewed, and approved work will be published in a conference publication.
‘Invited speakers and peer-reviewed scientific articles will represent the traditional world of conferences. All the other areas of the conference will be open to everyone, and we hope that people will participate actively and with an open mind. Students and senior high school students are also welcome to submit their suggestions’, Peltonen says.
Approximately 350 participants are expected to attend the conference. However, this does not include all visitors, such as the participants of the family day to be held at the National Museum of Finland or the viewers of various performances and exhibitions.
Different deadlines have been set for submitting scientific articles and artwork for review. The first deadline is on 1 February 2020 and the last on 15 May 2020. More information about the deadlines can be found on the conference website.
Aalto Math & Arts in Shanghai Future Art Lab exhibition is a joint effort of three schools of Aalto University: School of Arts, Design and Architecture, School of Science and School of Engineering.
'The focus of our contribution in the exhibition is to introduce the interdisciplinary Math & Arts program, especially its underlying course Crystal Flowers in Halls of Mirrors: mathematics, arts and architecture related to activities of the audience', explains Kirsi Peltonen, Adjunct Professor in Mathematics from the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis Science.
The exhibition concept is designed by Laura Isoniemi, designer and art pedagogue from the School of Arts, Design and Architecture.
'In the Future Lab exhibition we have three sections showcasing the development of Aalto Math & Arts program, the Past, Present and Future', Isoniemi says.
The Past section tells the story of the Aalto Math & Arts program through videos, posters, graphical info material, hands on educational models and ideas related to surface design.
The Present part continues the story by showing the latest course outcomes from the exhibition IN TRANSITION – Mathematics and Art at Espoo Cultural Centre in Finland via textiles and an interactive virtual exhibition realised by the School of Engineering.
The Future part communicates with different workshop outcomes how art and math can collaborate. It presents the pedagogical ideas implemented with students of Tongji-Huangpu School of Design & Innovation, teachers from different schools and universities in China and showcases a large-scale model designed by Taneli Luotoniemi. This sculpture, SPACE HUG, invites the visitor to join a non-stop installation process and build his/her own small-scale model from bamboo sticks.
The virtual exhibition combines conventional online content with panoramic images, illustrations, augmented reality and 3D scenes.
'By utilising the techniques from 3D geomatics, such as photogrammetry and laser scanning, the virtual exhibition allows the user to study the IN TRANSITION exhibition contents. It also creates a lasting digital footprint for the otherwise temporary event', says Juho-Pekka Virtanen, D.Sc. (Tech.) from the School of Engineering.
The virtual exhibition can be accessed online at: https://foto.aalto.fi/kristalli
The dissertation "Metric compactification of Banach spaces" contains a detailed overview of the construction of the metric compactification of arbitrary metric spaces followed by complete explicit descriptions of the metric compactification of classical Banach spaces in finite and infinite dimensions. Consequently, some ergodic and fixed point theorems are revisited.
Natural and social phenomena are often modeled by deterministic or random processes. These models can be mathematically described by a collection of mappings acting on certain spaces with a rich structure. Metric spaces are perfect environments where many mathematical models can be analyzed analytically and geometrically. In order to obtain precise knowledge of the model we also need certain topological properties. Compactness is a topological property that is needed in many areas of mathematics.
The metric compactification is the result of making a metric space into a dense subset of a compact space by adding a boundary at infinity. The elements of the metric compactification have functorial properties and, more importantly, define a weak topology on arbitrary metric spaces that gives a geometric interpretation of points escaping to infinity.
Explicit formulas for all the elements of the metric compactification of classical Banach spaces were presented in this dissertation. In addition, geometric proofs of certain ergodic and fixed point theorems were provided.
Opponent: Dr. Bas Lemmens, University of Kent, UK.
Custos: Professor Kalle Kytölä, Aalto University School of Science, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis.
Contact information: Armando W. Gutiérrez, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, wladimir.gutierrez@aalto.fi, +593443075558
In the dissertation “On Computational modeling of Biological Development” the biological patterning and growth were investigated by means of computational simulation. The focus of the research was on understanding the patterning of taste papillae and the formation of tooth enamel.
Opponent: Professor Nicolas Goudemand, Institut de Génomifique Fonctionnelle de Lyon (IGFL), ENS Lyon, France.
Custos: Professor Antti Hannukainen, Aalto University School of Science, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis.
Contact information: Teemu Häkkinen, University of California, San Francisco, +1-(415)-676-0215, teemu.hakkinen@aalto.fi
The dissertation is publicly displayed 10 days before the defence at the noticeboard of the School of Science in Konemiehentie 2, Espoo.
The goal of the dissertation "On Matroid Theory and Distributed Data Storage" is to obtain tradeoffs between the main parameters of a distributed storage system with locality, as well as to analyse the repair properties of certain optimal storage codes. This is done by developing connections between storage codes and matroids.
In the last few years, the development of web services and social media content has generated an astronomical quantity of digital data. From the point of view of a single user, cloud storage allows for a constant and remote access to the data without overwhelming their own storage capacity. The same benefits apply to companies as well, on a much larger scale. Therefore, huge data storage systems were built by the big information technology companies such as Amazon and Microsoft to offer cloud storage and cloud computing. The starting point of this thesis is to study how to efficiently and reliably store data. Since the data is spread amongst multiple storage servers, a storage system has to deal with several server failures on a daily basis. To prevent from data loss, it is necessary to store redundant data alongside the initial data by using a storage code. The amount of redundant data in the system is referred to as the storage overhead. When a server fails, a new server is added to the system and nearby servers are contacted to reconstruct the lost data. The number of servers contacted for repairing a server failure is called the locality.
This thesis focuses on the notion of locality. More precisely, the main goal is to derive tradeoffs between the storage overhead, the failure tolerance, and the locality when the underlying code alphabet is fixed. Deriving a tradeoff is important in practice as it characterises the best possible codes. Furthermore, since the alphabet relates to the repair complexity and affects the different aforementioned notions, it is interesting to derive alphabet-dependent tradeoffs. To approach this problem, we use the internal structure of the storage codes and the relation between codes and matroids. Matroids are interesting mathematical objects on their own right and provide useful tools to analyse the internal structure of the storage codes. In addition to deriving tradeoffs, matroidal tools help in the design of efficient repair processes for storage codes.
Opponent: Dr. Thomas Britz, University of New South Wales, Australia
Custos: Professor Camilla Hollanti, Aalto University School of Science, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis
Doctoral candidate: Matthias Grezet, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, matthias.grezet@aalto.fi, +358 505052525
The dissertation is publicly displayed 10 days before the defence at the noticeboard of the School of Science in Konemiehentie 2, Espoo.
Dissertation "Optimization Models for Assessing Energy Systems in Transition" presents models for assessing the ongoing transition of energy systems.
Opponent: Professor Steven Gabriel, University of Maryland, USA.
Custos: Professor Ahti Salo Aalto University School of Science, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis
Contact information: Vilma Virasjoki, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, vilma.virasjoki@aalto.fi
Salo has also received other awards for his work. For instance, he and his collaborators Jeffrey Keisler and Alec Morton won the 2013 Publication Award of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society for their book on portfolio decision analysis.
“Conventional methods of decision analysis help pick one good alternative from many alternatives. Our work on portfolio decision analysis extends these methods to problems in which the number of alternatives can be very high and many of them will be selected. We have successfully worked on many applications in areas such as energy, healthcare and risk management”, explains Salo.
A team of Aalto University students participated in the International Mathematics Competition for University Students 2019 in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria at the end of July.
The team was very successful, receiving three medals and an honorary mention. Selim Virtanen received a silver medal and bronze medals went to Alvar Kallio and Iiro Kumpulainen, whereas Aman Sher Agha obtained an honorary mention.
As in the International Math Olympiad for high school students, several medals of each color are given. This year the requirement for a silver medal was a position within the best 50% out of a total of 360 participants. The best competitors (Grand First Prize) came from the universities of Göttingen and Saint Petersburg.
Participation in the competition was funded by Emil Aaltonen Foundation.
Further information:
Pekka Alestalo, team leader
pekka.alestalo@aalto.fi
IMC website (results and problems with solutions from all years)
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