Pure Maths Colloquium: Daniel Bernstein

Rigidity theory asks and answers questions about how a given mechanical structure can deform. This area extends back into the nineteenth century with work of Cauchy and Maxwell, and continues to be an active area of research with a wide range of applications. I will begin my talk with a broad overview of this area. Then, I will narrow my focus onto symmetry-forced rigidity of plane frameworks to discuss a recent result. I will discuss the algebraic-geometric ideas involved in the proof, and how these same ideas can be used to address certain problems in matrix completion.