News

An afternoon of talks on Tropical mathematics and its applications was held at Queen Mary University of London on Wednesday 13 November 2024.

The speakers were Rob Silversmith (Warwick), Victoria Schleis (Durham/IAS) and Basile Coron (QMUL).

Several member of the Centre for Combinatorics, Algebra and Number Theory participated in this meeting and afterwards we got the thoughts of two PhD students Linxuan Li and Cat Rust.

What were your general impressions of the conference?

Linxuan: The atmosphere of the conference was excellent, and I was delighted to see some familiar faces. Everyone was friendly and open to socializing with new people, and I also really enjoyed the tea breaks when everyone would gather to chat together. I was very happy to connect with some people I had met briefly before but hadn't spoken to.

Cat: The atmosphere was very friendly and relaxed. I enjoyed the structure a lot: there was a good balance of talks and socializing which made it less tiring than other conferences I've been to – in particular, the talks were of good length. The speakers were all very good and great at answering questions, which made asking them less daunting. The breaks also allowed for time to ask the speakers longer questions directly after their talks, which is hard to do ordinarily. The organizers were also very friendly, and it all ran on time.

How do you feel it has it helped your research?

Cat: I had seen Rob's talk before but managed to follow along more closely this time. I found his result very cool and unexpected: I always enjoy seeing where unexpected connections within different fields occur (graph theory & algebraic geometry here) so this was enlightening for me. Victoria's talk was helpful for me as it showed me some techniques that I hadn't met before, namely using floor diagrams, which I am now reading about in a paper, so seeing them in her talk helped prepare me for this. I enjoyed learning about the matroid Chow ring in Basile's talk but had to leave early so I sadly didn't get to see it all.

Linxuan: Victoria's talk on tropical curves was quite enlightening for me. Although Rob's presentation wasn't directly related to my research, it gave me some insights into the use of moduli spaces in tropical geometry. Basile's talk on the definition of the matroid Chow ring was also very interesting to me. In particular, his detailed calculations of the matroid Chow ring were helpful for my research.

If an undergraduate wanted to attend the conference, what advice would you give them?

Linxuan: Just relax and enjoy it. Don't worry too much about whether you'll understand everything.

Cat: I'd say don't worry too much if the speaker uses terms or objects that you're not 100% familiar with – there will be other people in the audience in the same boat, no matter what level they are at. Talk to as many people as you can (people will be very friendly) and try to come away with some things that you'd like to learn more about!

Anything else?

Cat: The tropical community seems to be full of very friendly people which was great to see! I haven't spent much time at purely tropical events so this was a great first conference!

---

Thanks to Linxuan and Cat for sharing their thoughts. Read more about them and their research here:

Cat Rust Webpage

Linxuan Li Webpage

Tropical and combinatorial algebraic geometry is a theme within the Algebra Group in the Centre for Combinatorics, Algebra and Number Theory.

This meeting was one of the activities of the joint research group in tropical mathematics formed by researchers in UK mathematics departments at universities including Manchester, Birmingham, Warwick, Queen Mary University of London and Durham, with financial support from the London Mathematical Society.