WOMP 2024

(Last updated September 16, 2024)

The Warmup Program for entering first-year graduate students in mathematics is a sequence of social and academic events organized by senior graduate students in the Math department. The goals of the 2024 program are to inform incoming graduate students about coursework, give an overview of research directions and content available in the department, provide opportunities for first-year students to meet senior graduate students, and develop a group dynamic among the first year cohort.

Events will be in Ryerson 176 unless otherwise stated

*The schedule down below is provisional, please check back for the final version nearer to the beginning of WOMP.


WOMP

Day
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Monday
23 Sep
Welcome Coffee and Breakfast

Polina and Marrs


Welcome to the department! Meet the organizers and your fellow first-years and get oriented. Meet in Eckhart 209.

Real Analysis

Fran Herr


Topics: Types of convergence and continuity, Stone-Weierstrass theorem, implicit function theorem, inverse function theorem, contraction mapping theorem

Smooth Manifolds

Faye Jackson


Topics: Tangent and cotangent bundle. Vector fields and differential forms. Exterior derivative, which commutes with pullback. Integration and Stokes' theorem.
Snacks and Chats with AWM

Location TBA

An informal discussion with the UChicago Association for Women in Math (AWM). Lunch and light bites will be provided. Students of all genders are welcome!

Research Talk

Megan Roda


Tour of Hyde Park

Polina, Marrs


First-Year First-Dinner


First years only
Tuesday
24 Sep
PSD Orientation

Physical Sciences Division

Location: Logan Center for the Arts

Complex Analysis

Leo Bonanno


Topics: Complex plane and Riemann sphere, Cauchy-Riemann equations, Laurent series, analytic functions-- with a goal of presenting the Cauchy integral formula and Liouville's theorem

Trip to ISAC

Marrs


Nnot interested in the University programming? Visit the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures instead!

UChicago Welcome Convocation

UChicagoGRAD

Location: Rockefeller Chapel

Resource Fair and Free Lunch

UChicagoGRAD

Location: Ida Noyes Hall and Midway

International Student Welcome


UChicagoGRAD

Location: Ida Noyes Hall
Wednesday
25 Sep
Linear Algebra

Callum Sutton


Topics: Characteristic and minimal polynomial, Cayley-Hamilton theorem. Jordan canonical form. Dual spaces, dual transformations, inner products, and the spectral theorem.

Representation Theory

Dragos Crisan


Topics: Maschke's theorem. Schur's Lemma and orthogonality of characters. Some examples of character tables.
GSU Info Session



The graduate workers are unionized, come grab lunch with GSU organizers and get to know more about your union.


Research Talk

Duarte Maia


Writing down a list of things can be hard even if writing down each individual item is easy, but just how hard can it be?
Some time ago, my advisor (Denis Hirschfeldt) proposed a question that I thought was cute and didn't seem too hard. Six months later, at least I still think the question is cute. In order to complain about how hard it is, I will first teach you some computability theory. By the end of my talk, hopefully you will understand the question: "Is [being capable of making a list of all computable sets] a harder ask than [being capable of making a list of all the paths of this one specific binary tree constructed by Terrence Millar]?" I will also present some cool results which are vaguely related to this question.

Board Game Night

Duarte and Marrs

Room: Ryerson 4th Floor
Thursday
26 Sep
Fundamental Group

Abhijit Mudigonda


Topics: Definition of homotopy and of pi_1. Some example computations. Covering spaces and deck transformations, towards the Galois correspondence for covers.

Research Talk

Jin Woo Sung


Two-dimensional random geometry
How does a sphere with "uniformly sampled" geometry look like? In the last fifteen or so years, probabilists (including our very own Ewain Gwynne) have come up with a coherent answer to this question under the name of Liouville quantum gravity (LQG). I will survey some of its fascinating properties (e.g., it has Hausdorff dimension 4) and deep connections to various areas of math (e.g., Kähler geometry of the universal Teichmüller space) and physics (e.g., bosonic string theory).
Orientation with Faculty

Faculty


Galois Theory

Wei Yao


Topics: Irreducible polynomials, field extensions, splitting fields, algebraic closure, normal extensions (done through examples to account for time)-- with a goal of presenting the Galois correspondence theorem

Forum on the First Year Program and Finding an Advisor

Noah, Bruno, Aadrita, Dragos


(and really just anything else you want to know from older graduate students about math, UChicago, Chicago, etc.)
Bonfire at the Point
Friday
27 Sep
Measure Theory

Carolyn Lee


Topics: Measures and sigma-algebras, non-measureable sets and Cantor sets, Lebesgue measure, integration, Dominated convergence, and Fubini's theorem

Curvature of Surfaces

Noah Caplinger


Topics: Curves on surfaces, First and second fundamental forms, the Gauss map, geodesics, principal curvatures-- with a goal of presenting Gauss-Bonnet
Lunch



Research Talk

Iqra Altaf


An algorithmic approach to Hausdorff and Packing Dimension

Sexual Misconduct and Prevention Training

The Faculty

First-Year Class Photo

The Department


Meet on the front steps of Eckhart.
WOMP Rager



IT'S A PARTY! The location will be sent by email.
Saturday
28 Sep

Walk Downtown DELAYED to Sunday due to expected rain. Enjoy the day and get some sleep!

Sunday
29 Sep
Walk Downtown For Dinner


Meet at the exit tunnel to Promontory Point in front of the fountain at 3:30 PM. The walk will take approximately 2-2.5 hours, and we will end up at Giordano's (or Lou Malnati's).
Monday
30 Sep
Commutative Algebra

Zhong Zhang


Topics: Rings and modules. Prime ideals and localization. Introduction to varieties and the Nullstellensatz, emphasizing the dictionary between algebra and geometry

Location: 4th Floor Ryerson
Welcome Picnic

The Department

Eckhart Hall Lawn

"Please RSVP here , no later than the end of day Wednesday, September 25th. "

Faculty Open House

Your Favorite Professor's Office

Want to get to know some of the faculty at UChicago? Drop in their office to say hello and chat! Participating faculty can be found here.
Movie Night


After having your first day on, come watch the classic film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

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