Round I assignments and revised presentation schedule
Announcement · September 9, 2026 · Updated September 19
Round I assignments and revised presentation schedule
Round I begins Monday, September 28, and finishes Monday, October 19, after Fall Break. The instructor-led bridge will continue through Friday, September 25.
The course calendar has been revised to reflect the current enrolment of seven students and the additional time needed for the instructor-led bridge. Each student will give three presentations rather than four. Topic assignments are unchanged. Round I consists of seven presentations:
| Date | Student | Assigned topic |
|---|---|---|
| Mon. Sept. 28 | Yizhou Li | 06 — Gaussian Poincaré inequality via the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck semigroup |
| Wed. Sept. 30 | Rohan Mecheri | 02 — Random walk on a cycle and diffusive relaxation |
| Fri. Oct. 2 | Justin Blanco | 01 — Sharp Poincaré inequalities and boundary conditions |
| Mon. Oct. 5 | Oliver Yao | 07 — Logarithmic Sobolev inequalities and the Herbst argument |
| Wed. Oct. 7 | Sudais Arif | 04 — Cheeger inequality and bottlenecks on regular graphs |
| Fri. Oct. 9 | Sarah Yildirim | 03 — Tensorization of variance and the Efron–Stein inequality |
| Mon. Oct. 19 | Amber Zhang | 10 — Entropy, likelihood, and Gibbs equilibrium |
The complete revised calendar contains three seven-presentation rounds. The September 19 update shifts the programme one class meeting later through November 16 and removes that day’s workshop; presentations from November 18 onward retain their dates. Later-round dates remain provisional, and speaker order varies to distribute preparation time. If a conflict that was not covered by the original preference form prevents you from presenting on your assigned Round I date, contact the instructor as soon as possible.
See the revised course schedule for the complete calendar and the Course notes page for the quick-browse booklet, complete packet set, topic catalogue, and all individual packets.