Speaker:  Joshua Males, University of Cologne (Germany)

Title:  Constructing quantum modular forms of depth two

Abstract: Work of Bringmann, Kaszian and Milas in 2017 introduced the concept of higher depth quantum modular forms
(qmfs), and therein provided one such example of a qmf of depth two, related to characters of vertex algebras. In this talk
we see how to generalise their work to obtain an infinite family of non-trivial qmfs of depth two. To show this, we relate our
constructed function F asymptotically to double Eichler integrals on the lower half plane, and further to non-holomorphic
theta functions with coefficients given by double error functions.  (Contact Person: Larry Rolen)

Speaker:  Laurentiu Maxim, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Title:  Euclidean distance degree of algebraic varieties 

Abstract: The Euclidean distance degree of an algebraic variety is a well-studied topic in applied algebra and geometry.
It has direct applications in geometric modeling, computer vision, and statistics. I will first describe a new topological
interpretation of the Euclidean distance degree of an affine variety in terms of Euler characteristics. As a concrete application,
I will present a solution to the open problem in computer vision of determining the Euclidean distance degree of the affine
multiview variety. Secondly, I will present a solution to a conjecture of Aluffi-Harris concerning the Euclidean distance
degree of projective varieties (Joint work with J. Rodriguez and B. Wang.)  (Contact Person: Rares Rasdeaconu)

Speaker:  Kate Ponto, University of Kentucky

Title:  TBA

Abstract: TBA  (Contact Person: Anna Marie Bohmann)