Northwestern Events Calendar

Oct
11
2025

46th Midwest Probability Colloquium | Dana Randall (Georgia Tech)

When: Saturday, October 11, 2025
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM CT

Where: Swift Hall, 107, 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Elton Hsu   (847) 491-8541

Group: Department of Mathematics: Special Events

Category: Lectures & Meetings, Academic

Description:

Title: Local-global principles for programming collectives

Abstract:  Programmable matter explores how collections of computationally limited agents acting locally and asynchronously can achieve some useful coordinated behavior.  We take a stochastic approach using techniques from randomized algorithms and statistical physics to develop distributed algorithms for emergent collective behaviors that give guarantees and are robust to failures.  By analyzing the Gibbs distribution of various fixed-magnetization models from equilibrium statistical mechanics, we show that particles moving stochastically according to local affinities can solve various useful collective tasks. Finally, we will briefly introduce new tools that may prove fruitful in nonequilibrium settings as well.

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