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September 22, 2017

Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Posted by John Baez

I’m running a special session on applied category theory, and now the program is available:

This is going to be fun.

My former student Brendan Fong is now working with David Spivak at M.I.T., and they’re both coming. My collaborator John Foley at Metron is also coming: we’re working on the CASCADE project for designing networked systems.

Dmitry Vagner is coming from Duke: he wrote a paper with David and Eugene Lerman on operads and open dynamical system. Christina Vaisilakopolou, who has worked with David and Patrick Schultz on dynamical systems, has just joined our group at UCR, so she will also be here. And the three of them have worked with Ryan Wisnesky on algebraic databases. Ryan will not be here, but his colleague Peter Gates will: together with David they have a startup called Categorical Informatics, which uses category theory to build sophisticated databases.

That’s not everyone — for example, most of my students will be speaking at this special session, and other people too — but that gives you a rough sense of some people involved. The conference is on a weekend, but John Foley and David Spivak and Brendan Fong and Dmitry Vagner are staying on for longer, so we’ll have some long conversations… and Brendan will explain decorated corelations in my Tuesday afternoon network theory seminar.

Wanna see what the talks are about?

Here’s the program. Click on talk titles to see abstracts. For a multi-author talk, the person with the asterisk after their name is doing the talking. All the talks will be in Room 268 of the Highlander Union Building or ‘HUB’.

Saturday November 4, 2017, 9:00 a.m.-10:50 a.m.

9:00 a.m.
A higher-order temporal logic for dynamical systems.
David I. Spivak, M.I.T.


10:00 a.m.
Algebras of open dynamical systems on the operad of wiring diagrams.
Dmitry Vagner*, Duke University
David I. Spivak, M.I.T.
Eugene Lerman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


10:30 a.m.
Abstract dynamical systems.
Christina Vasilakopoulou*, University of California, Riverside
David Spivak, M.I.T.
Patrick Schultz, M.I.T.


Saturday November 4, 2017, 3:00 p.m.-5:50 p.m.

3:00 p.m.
Black boxes and decorated corelations.
Brendan Fong, M.I.T.


4:00 p.m.
Compositional modelling of open reaction networks.
Blake S. Pollard*, University of California, Riverside
John C. Baez, University of California, Riverside


4:30 p.m.
A bicategory of coarse-grained Markov processes.
Kenny Courser, University of California, Riverside


5:00 p.m.
A bicategorical syntax for pure state qubit quantum mechanics.
Daniel Michael Cicala, University of California, Riverside


5:30 p.m.
Open systems in classical mechanics.
Adam Yassine, University of California Riverside


Sunday November 5, 2017, 9:00 a.m.-10:50 a.m.

9:00 a.m.
Controllability and observability: diagrams and duality.
Jason Erbele, Victor Valley College


9:30 a.m.
Frobenius monoids, weak bimonoids, and corelations.
Brandon Coya, University of California, Riverside


10:00 a.m.
Compositional design and tasking of networks.
John D. Foley*, Metron, Inc.
John C. Baez, University of California, Riverside
Joseph Moeller, University of California, Riverside
Blake S. Pollard, University of California, Riverside


10:30 a.m.
Operads for modeling networks.
Joseph Moeller*, University of California, Riverside
John Foley, Metron Inc.
John C. Baez, University of California, Riverside
Blake S. Pollard, University of California, Riverside


Sunday November 5, 2017, 2:00 p.m.-4:50 p.m.

2:00 p.m.
Reeb graph smoothing via cosheaves.
Vin de Silva, Department of Mathematics, Pomona College


3:00 p.m.
Knowledge representation in bicategories of relations.
Evan Patterson*, Stanford University, Statistics Department


3:30 p.m.
The multiresolution analysis of flow graphs.
Steve Huntsman*, BAE Systems


4:00 p.m.
Data modeling and integration using the open source tool Algebraic Query Language (AQL).
Peter Y. Gates*, Categorical Informatics
Ryan Wisnesky, Categorical Informatics

Posted at September 22, 2017 12:08 AM UTC

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13 Comments & 0 Trackbacks

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

I’ll be speaking at this same AMS meeting, about magnitude homology, at 3pm on Saturday in the homotopy theory special session. I’ll try to drop by your session too, at least on Saturday, but my time constraints are rather severe (ideally, I’ll be driving up from San Diego after breakfast and getting home by dinner).

Posted by: Mike Shulman on September 22, 2017 9:28 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Great! I would like to attend your talk, but I’ll be tied down as the organizer of this special session, so I hope to meet you at mine — or maybe at lunch, which lasts from about 11 am to 3 pm. (That’s how long lunch should always last.)

Posted by: John Baez on September 22, 2017 6:25 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

lunch, which lasts from about 11 am to 3 pm

Only if you’re planning to skip the invited addresses. (For shame!) Or eat your lunch while attending them, I guess.

Posted by: Mark Meckes on September 22, 2017 7:58 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Yeah, I forgot the plenary talks, which should be interesting:

Posted by: John Baez on September 22, 2017 8:23 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

The second to last speaker on Sunday had to cancel:

4:00 p.m.
Categorical logic as a foundation for reasoning under uncertainty.
Ralph L. Wojtowicz*, Shepherd University

Thus, the last talk on Sunday has now been moved to this 4:00 slot.

Posted by: John Baez on September 28, 2017 11:24 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Darn! That talk had looked very interesting, and I’d hoped there would eventually be video or at least a bit of live-blog-commenting.

Posted by: Blake Stacey on October 1, 2017 9:34 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

There won’t be videos unless someone is much more energetic than I expect. This is just an AMS special session, and while in retrospect this one will doubtless be of historic interest, these special sessions are rarely videotaped (yet).

Posted by: John Baez on October 1, 2017 11:32 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Off-topic, but this might be a good place for people to share their stories/memories of Voevodsky given the news of his death.

Posted by: none on October 1, 2017 9:25 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

It’s not. I’ll post a short article about his death, and that would be a good place for what you’re suggesting.

Posted by: John Baez on October 1, 2017 10:43 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Hello! I am a first time poster and undergraduate student who is interested in learning more about categories and attending mathematical conferences in general. I was wondering if it would be at all appropriate or possible for me to attend given that I am not yet professionally invested in the field. Thanks in advance!

Posted by: Roque Macias on October 5, 2017 1:02 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

I personally see no harm in attending conferences as an undergraduate who is serious about a field. In fact I would encourage undergraduate students or new graduate students to pursue such opportunities (insofar as their purse allows). Of course it could be a heady and bewildering experience…

Posted by: Todd Trimble on October 5, 2017 3:42 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

Sure, give it a try! The talks on Saturday morning are all related to each other and form a kind of ‘block’. The talks on Saturday afternoon form another ‘block’. The first two talks on Sunday morning also form a block, and the second two talks form yet another ‘block’.

Posted by: John Baez on October 5, 2017 6:13 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Applied Category Theory at UCR (Part 2)

I will definitely attend then! I just registered for the event. Heady or bewildering or anything else, I’ll be looking forward to whatever kind of experience this will be. Thank you!

Posted by: Roque Macias on October 5, 2017 6:54 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

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