Courses: upcoming
The following courses were scheduled for the upcoming academic year:
The following courses were scheduled for the upcoming academic year:
Anotida Madzvamuse : am823@math.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia
Ordinary differential equations
Numerical methods (Numerical Analysis I and II)
Partial differential equations
Matrix theory
Linear systems
Registration for this course is not currently available.
The purpose of this graduate course is to equip graduate students with cutting-edge techniques in data-driven mathematical and computational modelling, analysis and simulations of semi-linear parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs) of reaction-diffusion type. It will cover diverse areas in data-driven modelling using PDEs in biology. I will cover approaches on formulating models from data using first principles, mathematical analysis of reaction-diffusion systems such as linear stability analysis, basic concepts on bifurcation analysis and numerical bifurcation analysis. The second part will focus on numerical methods for PDEs including finite difference methods, and finite elements. This part will also deal with time-stepping schemes and nonlinear solvers for nonlinear PDEs. If time allows, we will look at applications of reaction diffusion theory to cell motility and pattern formation. To support theoretical modelling and numerical analysis, numerical algorithms will be developed and implemented in MATLAB as well as in open finite element source software packages such as FeNiCs, deal.ii and others. Students will be allowed to use packages of their choice as appropriate. Expertise and skills sets to be acquired through this course
We will use zoom for each lecture. Course notes will be distributed in advance and lecture notes will be distributed after each lecture.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network.
Soumik Pal : soumikpal@gmail.com
University of Washington
Young-Heon Kim : yhkim@math.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia
First year graduate course in real analysis and/or probability.
This course is available for registration under the Western Dean's Agreement but registrations must be approved by the course instructor. Please contact the instructor (using the email link to the left) including details of how you meet the course prerequisites. Next, you must complete the Western Deans' Agreement form , with the following course details:
University of Washington Students:
All Other WDA Students:
Completed forms should be returned to your graduate advisor who will sign it and take the required steps. For students at PIMS sites, please see this list to find your graduate advisor, for other sites, please see the Western Deans' Agreement website .
The Western Deans' Agreement provides an automatic tuition fee waiver for visiting students. Graduate students paying normal required tuition fees at their home institution will not pay tuition fees to the host institution. However, students will typically be be required to pay other ancillary fees to the host institution, or explicitly request exemptions (e.g. Insurance or travel fees). Details vary by university, so please contact the graduate student advisor at your institution for help completing the form. Links to fee information and contact information for PIMS member universities is available below in the WDA section.
Students at universities not covered by the WDA but which are part of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) may still be eligible to register for some courses under the terms of the Canadian University Graduate Transfer Agreement (CUGTA). Details of this program vary by university and registration is also typically subject to ancillary fees. Both your local and the hosting university must participate in the agreement (e.g. UBC does not participate in CAGS). Please contact the relevant graduate student advisors for more information.
The modern theory of Monge-Kantorovich optimal transport is barely three decades old. Already it has established itself as one of the most happening areas in mathematics. It lies at the intersection of analysis, geometry, and probability with numerous applications to physics, economics, and serious machine learning. This two quarter long graduate topics course will serve as an introduction to this rich and useful theory. We will roughly follow the following outline. Fall: Classical theory. Analytic description of solutions. Duality. Displacement convexity. The geometry of the Wasserstein space and Otto calculus. Winter: Entropy-regularized OT. Schroedinger bridges and statistical OT. This is a continuation of the sequence of OT+X courses under the Kantorovich Initiative.
Students at Canadian PIMS Member Universities may register through the Western Deans Agreement for the “shadow course” offered at UBC (see registration details above). Students at UW may register directly for the UW course. Course codes and other registration details for students in either of these cases are listed in the registration section above. Students at other institutions should contact one of the instructors to attend the course as a non-registered student.
Online instructions over Zoom. Written on a tablet. Notes will be provided. A Slack channel will be created for answering student questions. Weekly in person office hours will be held at UW and UBC.
Lecture notes will be distributed over Slack. Recorded lectures may be viewed on our YouTube channel.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network, and those coming from industry/government.
Ben Williams : tbjw@math.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia
a first course in real analysis, and some point-set topology, including quotient topologies, connectedness, path-connectedness.
Homotopy of maps and homotopy equivalence of spaces will be assumed, but the necessary background here can be quickly covered by self-study.
Fundamental groups and covering spaces, while helpful, are not necessary.
the theory of abelian groups, isomorphism theorems and the classification of finitely generated abelian groups.
Ring theory and the theory of modules over commutative rings is extremely helpful, but not formally required.
Registration for this course is not currently available.
This is a course in homology and cohomology of topological spaces. We study spaces and continuous functions by means of abelian groups and their homomorphisms. Topics will include cellular homology of spaces, calculation techniques and applications (e.g., fixed point theorems, invariance of domain), homological algebra, and cohomology, including the cup product and Poincaré duality.
Remote access for this course will be provided via zoom. The instructor intends to lecture from handwritten notes on a tablet. Lecture notes will be provided after the lectures have been delivered.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network, and those coming from industry/government.
Miranda Holmes-Cerfon : holmescerfon@math.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia
Good upper level undergraduate or early graduate knowledge of:
Registration for this course is not currently available.
This course will introduce the major tools in stochastic analysis from an applied mathematics perspective. Topics to be covered include Markov chains (both discrete and continuous), Gaussian processes, Ito calculus, stochastic differential equations (SDEs), numerical algorithms for solving SDEs, forward and backward Kolmogorov equations and their applications. It will pay particular attention to the connection between stochastic processes and PDEs, as well as to physical principles and applications. The class will attempt to strike a balance between rigour and heuristic arguments: it will assume that students have seen a little analysis, particularly in the context of studying PDEs, but will generally avoid measure theory. The target audience is graduate students in applied mathematics or related fields, who wish to use these tools in their research for modelling or simulation. The course will be divided roughly into two parts: the first part will focus on stochastic processes, particularly Markov chains, and the second part will focus on stochastic differential equations and their associated PDEs.
Remote access will be provided via zoom. The lectures will be delivered mostly on blackboards with occasional slides. PDF lecture notes will be handed out.
This course is open to students from within the PIMS network of universities.
Jonathan Noel : noelj@uvic.ca
University of Victoria
A first course in linear algebra
A 3rd year course in any area of discrete mathematics or combinatorics
This course is available for registration under the Western Dean's Agreement but registrations must be approved by the course instructor. Please contact the instructor (using the email link to the left) including details of how you meet the course prerequisites. Next, you must complete the Western Deans' Agreement form , with the following course details:
Completed forms should be returned to your graduate advisor who will sign it and take the required steps. For students at PIMS sites, please see this list to find your graduate advisor, for other sites, please see the Western Deans' Agreement website .
The Western Deans' Agreement provides an automatic tuition fee waiver for visiting students. Graduate students paying normal required tuition fees at their home institution will not pay tuition fees to the host institution. However, students will typically be be required to pay other ancillary fees to the host institution, or explicitly request exemptions (e.g. Insurance or travel fees). Details vary by university, so please contact the graduate student advisor at your institution for help completing the form. Links to fee information and contact information for PIMS member universities is available below in the WDA section.
Students at universities not covered by the WDA but which are part of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) may still be eligible to register for some courses under the terms of the Canadian University Graduate Transfer Agreement (CUGTA). Details of this program vary by university and registration is also typically subject to ancillary fees. Both your local and the hosting university must participate in the agreement (e.g. UBC does not participate in CAGS). Please contact the relevant graduate student advisors for more information.
Discrete optimization focuses on developing efficient methods to determine the maximum or minimum value of a function over a finite (discrete) domain. This course will cover a wide range of topics in discrete optimization which may include linear programming, semi-definite programming, dynamic programming, matroids, combinatorial algorithms, duality, hardness reductions, among others. We will also see many interesting applications of tools from Discrete Optimization to problems in combinatorics and other areas of mathematics and computer science.
This course will have an accompanying webpage
Materials related to the course, links and other updates will be posted to the course webpage as the course proceeds.
Remote access for this course will be provided via zoom. This course will be taught from the UVic Multiaccess classroom HHB 110. The room is equipped with multiple cameras in the ceiling which can capture two blackboard areas and TV screens that can be used to show the Zoom gallery. A demonstration of this system can be seen in the instructor’s existing Extremal Combinatorics Network Wide Course playlist. Notes and other course related material will be made available on the instructor’s website (see e.g. notes for Extreemal Combinatorics).
Lectures will also be live-streamed on the instructors YouTube channel and also be available to view there asynchronously.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network, and those coming from industry/government.
Chuck Doran : charles.doran@ualbreta.ca
University of Alberta
The course is designed to be accessible to M.Sc. students and above
This course is available for registration under the Western Dean's Agreement but registrations must be approved by the course instructor. Please contact the instructor (using the email link to the left) including details of how you meet the course prerequisites. Next, you must complete the Western Deans' Agreement form , with the following course details:
Completed forms should be returned to your graduate advisor who will sign it and take the required steps. For students at PIMS sites, please see this list to find your graduate advisor, for other sites, please see the Western Deans' Agreement website .
The Western Deans' Agreement provides an automatic tuition fee waiver for visiting students. Graduate students paying normal required tuition fees at their home institution will not pay tuition fees to the host institution. However, students will typically be be required to pay other ancillary fees to the host institution, or explicitly request exemptions (e.g. Insurance or travel fees). Details vary by university, so please contact the graduate student advisor at your institution for help completing the form. Links to fee information and contact information for PIMS member universities is available below in the WDA section.
Students at universities not covered by the WDA but which are part of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) may still be eligible to register for some courses under the terms of the Canadian University Graduate Transfer Agreement (CUGTA). Details of this program vary by university and registration is also typically subject to ancillary fees. Both your local and the hosting university must participate in the agreement (e.g. UBC does not participate in CAGS). Please contact the relevant graduate student advisors for more information.
This course is an introduction to the theory of elliptic curves and modular forms at the graduate level. Elliptic curves will be introduced through both their classical analytic construction over the real and complex numbers and their algebraic realizations via normal forms over arbitrary fields. Moduli and monodromy considerations lead us to study the special role of the elliptic modular group SL(2,Z) and the crucial notions of modular functions and forms. Studying torsion points and level structure then motivates the extension to finite index subgroups and the theory of modular curves. Throughout the course, there will be an emphasis on hands-on explicit computations. Directed by the instructor, each student will complete a final project, presentation, and paper. Possible topics could include post-quantum elliptic curve cryptography, applications in string theory, geometry of elliptic modular surfaces, features of periods and Picard-Fuchs operators, etc.
The course will be taught over Zoom using a tablet and shared screen. Lecture notes will be written out live on a tablet. There will also be pre-prepared slides on certain topics. The in-class lecture notes will be saved and distributed as .pdf files. There will be a course webpage to host all of these plus additional course materials and readings.
The format will be Zoom based, with videos on. Breakout rooms will be used periodically for small group work. Students will be encouraged to “raise hands” with questions at any time.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network, and those coming from industry/government.
Steven Plotkin : steven.plotkin@ubc.ca
University of British Columbia
PHYS305 - Introduction to Biophysics (or equivalent)
This course is available for registration under the Western Dean's Agreement but registrations must be approved by the course instructor. Please contact the instructor (using the email link to the left) including details of how you meet the course prerequisites. Next, you must complete the Western Deans' Agreement form , with the following course details:
Completed forms should be returned to your graduate advisor who will sign it and take the required steps. For students at PIMS sites, please see this list to find your graduate advisor, for other sites, please see the Western Deans' Agreement website .
The Western Deans' Agreement provides an automatic tuition fee waiver for visiting students. Graduate students paying normal required tuition fees at their home institution will not pay tuition fees to the host institution. However, students will typically be be required to pay other ancillary fees to the host institution, or explicitly request exemptions (e.g. Insurance or travel fees). Details vary by university, so please contact the graduate student advisor at your institution for help completing the form. Links to fee information and contact information for PIMS member universities is available below in the WDA section.
Students at universities not covered by the WDA but which are part of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) may still be eligible to register for some courses under the terms of the Canadian University Graduate Transfer Agreement (CUGTA). Details of this program vary by university and registration is also typically subject to ancillary fees. Both your local and the hosting university must participate in the agreement (e.g. UBC does not participate in CAGS). Please contact the relevant graduate student advisors for more information.
This graduate course is designed to provide graduate students with key concepts and practical applications in Biophysics, with an emphasis on the quantitative tools as they are used in current research. Biophysics is a highly interdisciplinary field—the researchers who attend the annual Biophysical Society meeting, for example, come from departments spanning all of the STEM disciplines. Nevertheless, they share a common interest to establish a quantitative understanding of living matter. Despite growing interest however, a gap remains in graduate training to prepare students to contribute effectively to this broad and rapidly evolving field. This course aims to address this gap by covering both foundational and advanced concepts and applications that are commonly used by practicing biophysicists today. The structure of the course will follow selected advanced material from Physical Biology of the Cell by Rob Phillips, Jane Kondev, Julie Theriot, and Hernan G. Garcia. Each topic will be introduced conceptually, developed mathematically, and explored through real biological case studies using both textbook material and current literature. Given student interest, the course may include interviews with leading biophysicists on their recent published work. Topics will include:
Remote participation will be via zoom. Lectures will also be recorded and shared via UBC’s media capture system Panopto. Annotated notes on pre-distributed PDF slides are made during class using an iPad, recorded in real time, and uploaded to UBC’s Canvas server after class, along with links to the lecture recording.
This course may be open to students at universities outside of the PIMS network.
Andrew Warren : awarren@math.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia
Mathematical maturity at the second year master’s level or higher
Measure theory
This course is available for registration under the Western Dean's Agreement but registrations must be approved by the course instructor. Please contact the instructor (using the email link to the left) including details of how you meet the course prerequisites. Next, you must complete the Western Deans' Agreement form , with the following course details:
Completed forms should be returned to your graduate advisor who will sign it and take the required steps. For students at PIMS sites, please see this list to find your graduate advisor, for other sites, please see the Western Deans' Agreement website .
The Western Deans' Agreement provides an automatic tuition fee waiver for visiting students. Graduate students paying normal required tuition fees at their home institution will not pay tuition fees to the host institution. However, students will typically be be required to pay other ancillary fees to the host institution, or explicitly request exemptions (e.g. Insurance or travel fees). Details vary by university, so please contact the graduate student advisor at your institution for help completing the form. Links to fee information and contact information for PIMS member universities is available below in the WDA section.
Students at universities not covered by the WDA but which are part of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) may still be eligible to register for some courses under the terms of the Canadian University Graduate Transfer Agreement (CUGTA). Details of this program vary by university and registration is also typically subject to ancillary fees. Both your local and the hosting university must participate in the agreement (e.g. UBC does not participate in CAGS). Please contact the relevant graduate student advisors for more information.
This course is a bridge into the machine learning literature for graduate students in mathematics. Compared to existing course offerings in our neighbouring departments (mainly https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~dsuth/532D/23w1 (https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~dsuth/532D/23w1)) we will assume that you know somewhat more analysis, but prior coding experience will not be required. Briefly, the learning objectives are:
Remote access to this course will be via zoom. The delivery mechanism will be either blackboard or via tablet depending on available rooms. A PDF textbook and/or research article readings will be distributed in advance of each class.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network.
Rebecca Tyson : rebecca.tyson@ubc.ca
University of British Columbia - Okanagan
This course is available for registration under the Western Dean's Agreement but registrations must be approved by the course instructor. Please contact the instructor (using the email link to the left) including details of how you meet the course prerequisites. Next, you must complete the Western Deans' Agreement form , with the following course details:
Completed forms should be returned to your graduate advisor who will sign it and take the required steps. For students at PIMS sites, please see this list to find your graduate advisor, for other sites, please see the Western Deans' Agreement website .
The Western Deans' Agreement provides an automatic tuition fee waiver for visiting students. Graduate students paying normal required tuition fees at their home institution will not pay tuition fees to the host institution. However, students will typically be be required to pay other ancillary fees to the host institution, or explicitly request exemptions (e.g. Insurance or travel fees). Details vary by university, so please contact the graduate student advisor at your institution for help completing the form. Links to fee information and contact information for PIMS member universities is available below in the WDA section.
Students at universities not covered by the WDA but which are part of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) may still be eligible to register for some courses under the terms of the Canadian University Graduate Transfer Agreement (CUGTA). Details of this program vary by university and registration is also typically subject to ancillary fees. Both your local and the hosting university must participate in the agreement (e.g. UBC does not participate in CAGS). Please contact the relevant graduate student advisors for more information.
In this course we are learning to build and analyse nonlinear partial differential equation models. The focus of the course will be models of ecological systems, but the techniques learned apply broadly across application areas. We learn a wide variety of analytic, graphic, and simplification techniques which elucidate the behaviour of these mathematical models, whether or not a closed-form solution is available. By the end of the class, the students will be able to competently read and follow a research paper presenting and analysing a differential equation model from a wide variety of application areas. Broadly, the topics that we cover are applications of ecological applications of travelling waves, disease models, and pattern formation in reaction-diffusion and reaction-diffusion-chemotaxis models.
TBA
Lectures will be livestreamed via zoom. The lecturer will be writing on a whiteboard interspersed with pdf presentations. Lecture notes will be posted on Canvas.
This course may be open to students from universities outside of the PIMS network.