Time：14:00-16:00, Friday, October 27 2023
ZOOM ID: 961 0578 3232
PASSCODE: 047255
Host: Chuanhao Wei, ITS
Speaker：Botong Wang, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Biography: Botong Wang is an associate professor from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He obtained his bachelor degree from Peking University in 2006 and PhD from Purdue University in 2012. Botong then hold positions at University of Notre Dame and KU Leuven before moving to Madison. He studies the topology of algebraic varieties with applications in combinatorics and algebraic statistics. He was awarded Sloan fellowship in 2019. His best known work is the resolution of the Dowling-Wilson conjecture in collaboration with June Huh.
Title：Intersection cohomology in combinatorics
Abstract:
Many important posets (partially ordered sets) in combinatorics have algebriac interpretations. We will go over three families of examples: toric varieties, Schubert varieties and matroid Schubert varieties. We will discuss how to translate some of the combinatorical invariants into the geometric ones, and the application of intersection cohomology groups in solving combinatorical problems. In the second part, we will give a more detailed introduction to the definition of intersection cohomology in the non-realizable cases, that is, when there is no associated algebraic varieties.
