Math and Stat Colloquium

• December 7, 2023
• 4:00 PM - 5:00 CST
• IES 110
• Tuyen Tran, ttran18@luc.edu
• Open to the public.
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• Details

  Speaker: Elizabeth Gross, Associate Professor.
  Department of Mathematics, University of Hawai`i at M¿noa

  Title: The Algebra and Geometry of Evolutionary Biology

  Abstract: One of the main goals of evolutionary biology is to understand the evolutionary history of a set of species. These histories can aid in conservation efforts and are represented by directed graphs where the leaves represent living species and the interior nodes represent extinct species. While it is common to assume evolutionary histories are trees, when events such as hybridization are present, networks are more realistic. However, allowing for networks complicates the process of inference, and ways to overcome this complication are needed. One recent approach to phylogenetic network inference is rooted in algebra and geometry. In this talk, we discuss the role algebra and geometry has played in the statistical problems related to network inference and show how these tools combined with statistical learning can aid in network reconstruction.