BGSMath Colloquium 2021
Dates
📅 2 June 2021
🕒 16:00 / Central European Time (CET)
Speakers
Robert Ghrist (University of Pennsylvania)
Location
This colloquium will be held online via ZOOM. The relevant link will be provided to all registered participants in the days leading up to the colloquium.
Opinion Dynamics on Sheaves
There is a long history of networked dynamical systems that models the spread of opinions over social networks, with the graph Laplacian playing a lead role. One of the difficulties in modelling opinion dynamics is the presence of polarization: not everyone comes to consensus. This talk will describe joint work with Jakob Hansen introducing a new model for opinion dynamics using sheaves of vector spaces over social networks. The graph Laplacian is enriched to a Hodge Laplacian, and the resulting dynamics on discourse sheaves can lead to some very interesting and perhaps more realistic outcomes.
Biosketch
Robert Ghrist (Ph.D., Cornell, Applied Mathematics, 1995) is the Andrea Mitchell PIK Professor of Mathematics and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recognized leader in the field of Applied Algebraic Topology, working in sensor networks, robotics, signal processing, data analysis, optimization, and more. He is an award-winning researcher, teacher, and expositor of Mathematics and its applications. In his spare time, he enjoys animation and video production.