This book comprises an overview of twelve months of intense activity of the research group Geometry, Topology, Algebra, and Applications (GEOMVAP) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Namely, it contains extended abstracts of the group meeting in Cardona and of the international Workshop of Women in Geometry and Topology aligned with a series of workshops in the topic. As such, it includes a panoramic view of the main research interests of the group which focus on varieties and manifolds from the algebraic, topological and differential perspective with a view towards applications. The GEOMVAP group has a long tradition working on various interfaces of algebra, geometry and topology. In the last decade, the group has become active contributor in interdisciplinary science and it is now focused on both a theoretical point of view and the transversal applications to several disciplines including Robotics, Machine Learning, Phylogenetics, Physics and Celestial Mechanics. The increasing interdisciplinarity of modern research and the fact that the boundaries between different areas of mathematics are vanishing, with a constant transfer of problems and techniques between them, makes it difficult to progress without a multidisciplinary approach. GEOMVAP gathers together experts in Algebraic, Symplectic and Arithmetic Geometry to stimulate the interaction between them and to allow the study of each object from different points of view. The book aims at established researchers, as well as at PhD and postdoctoral students who want to learn more about the latest advances in pure and applied Geometry and Topology.

The winding number is one of the most basic invariants in topology. It measures the number of times a moving point P goes around a fixed point Q, provided that P travels on a path that never goes through Q and that the final position of P is the same as its starting position. This simple idea has far-reaching applications. The reader of this book will learn how the winding number can help us show that every polynomial equation has a root (the fundamental theorem of algebra),guarantee a fair division of three objects in space by a single planar cut (the ham sandwich theorem),explain why every simple closed curve has an inside and an outside (the Jordan curve theorem),relate calculus to curvature and the singularities of vector fields (the Hopf index theorem),allow one to subtract infinity from infinity and get a finite answer (Toeplitz operators),generalize to give a fundamental and beautiful insight into the topology of matrix groups (the Bott periodicity theorem). All these subjects and more are developed starting only from mathematics that is common in final-year undergraduate courses.

The book presents research works developed within the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD) by senior and young researchers that participated in the Intensive Research Program “Advances in the anthropological theory of the didactic and their consequences in curricula and teacher education” held at the Centre de Recerca Matematica (CRM) in Barcelona. It is organized in three axes of current research on the ATD: teacher education and the professionalization of teaching; the curriculum problem in the historical transition from the classical paradigm of visiting works to the emerging didactic paradigm of questioning the world; and research in didactics at the university level.

This volume contains extended abstracts outlining selected talks and other selected presentations given by participants of the workshop "Positivity and Valuations", held at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) in Barcelona from February 22nd to 26th, 2016. They include brief research articles reporting new results, descriptions of preliminary work or open problems, and the outcome of work in groups initiated during the workshop. The general subject is the application of valuation theory to positivity questions in algebraic geometry. The topics covered range from purely algebraic problems like finite generation of semigroups and algebras defined by valuations, and properties of the associated Poincaré series, to more geometric questions like resolution of singularities and properties of Newton-Okounkov bodies, linked with non-archimedean geometry and tropical geometry. The book is intended for established researchers, as well as for PhD and postdoctoral students who want to learn more about the latest advances in these highly active areas of research.

This volume contains extended abstracts outlining selected talks and other selected presentations given by participants throughout the "Intensive Research Program on Advances in Nonsmooth Dynamics 2016", held at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) in Barcelona from February 1st to April 29th, 2016. They include brief research articles reporting new results, descriptions of preliminary work or open problems, and outlines of prominent discussion sessions. The articles are all the result of direct collaborations initiated during the research program. The topic is the theory and applications of Nonsmooth Dynamics. This includes systems involving elements of: impacting, switching, on/off control, hybrid discrete-continuous dynamics, jumps in physical properties, and many others. Applications include: electronics, climate modeling, life sciences, mechanics, ecology, and more. Numerous new results are reported concerning the dimensionality and robustness of nonsmooth models, shadowing variables, numbers of limit cycles, discontinuity-induced bifurcations and chaos, determinacy-breaking, stability criteria, and the classification of attractors and other singularities. This material offers a variety of new exciting problems to mathematicians, but also a diverse range of new tools and insights for scientists and engineers making use of mathematical modeling and analysis. The book is intended for established researchers, as well as for PhD and postdoctoral students who want to learn more about the latest advances in these highly active areas of research.

Providing a self-contained treatment of persistence theory that is accessible to graduate students, this monograph includes chapters on infinite-dimensional examples including an SI epidemic model with variable infectivity, microbial growth in a tubular bioreactor, and an age-structured model of cells growing in a chemostat.

This book, first published in 2005, offers an introduction to the application of algebraic statistics to computational biology.

This book collects the extended abstracts of the accepted contributions to EuroComb21. A similar book is published at every edition of EuroComb (every two years since 2001) collecting the most recent advances in combinatorics, graph theory, and related areas. It has a wide audience in the areas, and the papers are used and referenced broadly.

Poisson structures appear in a large variety of contexts, ranging from string theory, classical/quantum mechanics and differential geometry to abstract algebra, algebraic geometry and representation theory. In each one of these contexts, it turns out that the Poisson structure is not a theoretical artifact, but a key element which, unsolicited, comes along with the problem that is investigated, and its delicate properties are decisive for the solution to the problem in nearly all cases. Poisson Structures is the first book that offers a comprehensive introduction to the theory, as well as an overview of the different aspects of Poisson structures. The first part covers solid foundations, the central part consists of a detailed exposition of the different known types of Poisson structures and of the (usually mathematical) contexts in which they appear, and the final part is devoted to the two main applications of Poisson structures (integrable systems and deformation quantization). The clear structure of the book makes it adequate for readers who come across Poisson structures in their research or for graduate students or advanced researchers who are interested in an introduction to the many facets and applications of Poisson structures.​

Phylogenetics is a topical and growing area of research. Phylogenies (phylogenetic trees and networks) allow biologists to study and graph evolutionary relationships between different species. These are also used to investigate other evolutionary processes?for example, how languages developed or how different strains of a virus (such as HIV or influenza) are related to each other. This self-contained book addresses the underlying mathematical theory behind the reconstruction and analysis of phylogenies. The theory is grounded in classical concepts from discrete mathematics and probability theory as well as techniques from other branches of mathematics (algebra, topology, differential equations). The biological relevance of the results is highlighted throughout. The author supplies proofs of key classical theorems and includes results not covered in existing books, emphasizes relevant mathematical results derived over the past 20 years, and provides numerous exercises, examples, and figures.