Introduction of speaker:

Professor Alejandro Adem was awarded an NSF Young Investigator Award in 1992, a Romnes Faculty Fellowship in 1995 and a Vilas Associate Award in 2003. During the period 1999-2002, Dr. Adem served as Chair of the Department of Mathematics at UW-Madison. From 2003 to 2007, he served as co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, and as a member of their Board of Trustees. On January 1, 2005, he became the Deputy Director of PIMS, and on July 1, 2008 he became the Director of PIMS. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences and the Banff International Research Station. On February 1, 2015, he became the CEO and Scientific Director of MITACS.

Abstract：

In this talk I will describe a new cohomology theory constructed out of commuting unitary matrices. I will discuss its role in bundle theory and homotopy theory. This is joint work with J.Gomez, J.Lind and U.Tillmann