Local to Global Principles

Program

Spectral Theory Beyond Graphs

Location

Calvin Lab auditorium

Date

Monday, Sept. 21 – Friday, Sept. 25, 2026

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All talks listed in Pacific Time. Schedule subject to change.

8:30 – 8:55 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

8:55 – 9 a.m.

Opening Remarks

9 – 9:50 a.m.

Trickle-down Theorems for High-dimensional Expanders via Log-concave Polynomials

Jonathan Leake (University of Waterloo)

9:50 – 10:10 a.m.

Break

10:10 – 11 a.m.

Trickle-Down in Localization Schemes

Frederic Koehler (University of Chicago)

11 – 11:30 a.m.

Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

From local discrete curvature notions of graphs to global properties of the underlying spaces

Norbert Peyerimhoff (Durham University)

12:30 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 3:30 p.m.

Property (T), sums of square and numerical certificates

Piotr Nowak (Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences)

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Reception

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 9:50 a.m.

Aldous-type Spectral Gaps in Unitary Groups

Gil Alon (The Open University of Israel)

9:50 – 10:20 a.m.

Break

10:20 – 11:10 a.m.

Random unitary circuits with constant spectral gap

Jeongwan Haah (Stanford University)

11:10 – 11:30 a.m.

Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Exercise Session

12:30 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 2:50 p.m.

Entropic independence

June Vuong (UC San Diego)

2:50 – 3:20 p.m.

Break

3:20 – 4:10 p.m.

Field dynamics and its applications

Xiaoyu Chen (MIT)

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 9:50 a.m.

Spectral gap of 1D quantum Gibbs samplers

Anthony Chen (Oratomic)

9:50 – 10:10 a.m.

Break

10:10 – 11 a.m.

Convex-body Sampling to the Kannan-Lovász-Simonovits Conjecture

Yunbum Kook (Georgia Tech)

11:10 – 11:30 a.m.

Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

A Look at Entropic Ricci Curvature on Weighted Graphs

Supanat Kamtue (Chulalongkorn University)

12:30 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 4 p.m.

Hike

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 – 9:50 a.m.

Curvatures of graphs

Fan Chung (UC San Diego)

9:50 – 10:20 a.m.

Break

10:20 – 11:10 a.m.

Sampling elements of a finite group: efficiency of the product replacement algorithm with accumulator

Piotr Mizerka (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Adam Mickiewicz U…

11:10 – 11:30 a.m.

Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Exercise Session

12:30 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 2:50 p.m.

Strong Spatial Mixing for Colorings on Trees and its Algorithmic Applications

Nitya Mani (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

2:50 – 3:20 p.m.

Break

3:20 – 4:10 p.m.

Discrete Isoperimetric Inequalities via Curvature

Zongchen Chen (Georgia Tech)

8:30 – 9 a.m.

Coffee and Check In

9 a.m. – 9:50 p.m.

Sampling Sphere Packings with Continuum Glauber Dynamics

Aiya Kuchukova (Georgia Tech)

9:50 – 10:20 a.m.

Break

10:20 – 11:10 a.m.

Aldous' spectral gap phenomenon for the KMP model

Federico Sau (University of Milan)

11:10 – 11:40 a.m.

Break

11:40 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Weak Poincaré Inequalities and Mixing from Non-Worst-Case Initializations

Amit Rajaraman (MIT)

12:30 – 2 p.m.

Lunch (on your own)

2 – 2:50 p.m.

Large scale consequences of non-negative Ollivier-Ricci curvature

Tom Hutchcroft (Caltech)

2:50 – 3:20 p.m.

Break

3:20 – 4:20 p.m.

Exercise Session