List of Talks

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This list was updated for the last time in the Summer Semester of 2019. The “What is...?” Seminar still continues, you can find the up-to-date list of talks at the new webpage whatisseminar.xyz.

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Summer Semester 2019

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
April 12	TU MA 212	13:15	What are... support vector machines?	Katerina Papagiannouli (HU)
April 19			No what-is (Good Friday/Karfreitag)
April 26	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... Steinitz' theorem?	Sophia Elia (FU)
May 3	FU SR 019 (Arnimallee 3)	13:15	What is... a g_d^r?	Carlos Maestro Pérez (HU)
May 10	Potsdam	14:00	No what-is (Euler Lecture)
May 17	FU/HU/TU (TBA)	TBA	TBA	TBA
May 24	BMS Loft	13:00	TBA	TBA
May 31	FU/HU/TU (TBA)	TBA	TBA	Riccardo Morandin (TU)
June 7	BMS Loft	13:00	TBA	TBA
June 14	FU/HU/TU (TBA)	TBA	TBA	Tom Klose (TU)
June 21	BMS Loft	13:30 (Kovalevskaya lunch)	TBA	TBA
June 28			No what-is (BMS-BGSMath Junior Meeting, please register!)
July 5	HU?	TBA	TBA (BMS Friday followed by the von Mises Lecture)	TBA
July 12			No what-is (last day of classes)

Winter Semester 2018/19

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
October 19			No what-is (Geo.X Career Day)
October 26	BMS Loft	13:00	What is.... the secret of the zeta function?	Barbara Jung (HU)
November 2			No what-is (BMS soft-skills seminar)
November 9	Urania	13:00	What is... the Euler characteristic of a polytope?	Hannah Sjöberg (FU)
November 16	TU MA212	TBA	What is... a topological surface?	Georg Lehner (FU)
November 23			No what-is (BMS soft-skills seminar)
November 30	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... the Alexander polynomial of a knot?	Max Krause (TU)
December 7	FU SR140	14:00	What is... the best voting system?	Josué Tonelli Cueto (TU)
December 14	BMS Loft	13:30	What is... tensor networks, topological order and entanglement renormalization?	Alex Nietner (FU)
December 21			No what-is (last day of classes)
January 11	FU SR140	14:15	What are... interval graphs, interval orders, and their friends?	Simona Boyadzhiyska (FU)
January 18	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a competing species model?	Florian Nie (TU)
January 25			No what-is
February 1	TU MA212	13:15	What is... a hydrodynamic limit?	Tommaso Cornelis Rosati (HU)
February 8	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... it like to lower the mixed volume?	Dimitrios Bogiokas (FU)
February 15			No what-is (last day of classes)
February 19	BMS Loft	10:00 (sharp!)	What is... the Wright-Fisher diffusion?	Eugenio Buzzoni (TU)

Summer Semester 2018

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
April 20			No what-is (BMS soft-skills seminar)
April 27	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a matroid?	Jorge Alberto Olarte (FU)
May 4	Potsdam	14:00	No what-is (Euler Lecture)
May 11			No what-is (after holiday)
May 18	BMS Loft	13:30	What is... Kronecker Coefficients?	Levent Doğan (TU)
May 25			No what-is
June 1	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... control theory?	Alejandro López (FU)
June 8	TU MA 415	14:00-18:00	"What is?" seminar 10th anniversary What is... an ultrafilter?	Peter Krautzberger
June 15	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a Scheme?	Marco D'Addezio (FU)
June 22			No what-is (von Mises lecture)
June 29	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... semialgebraic sets in context?	Josué Tonelli-Cueto (TU)
July 6	FU SR032	14:00	What is... a Positional Game?	Alp Müyesser (Carnegie Mellon)
July 13	FU Harnack-Haus	13:00	What is... a ranking algorithm?	Benjamin Gardiner (TU)
July 20			No what-is

Winter Semester 2017/18

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
October 20			No what-is (Geo.X Career Day)
October 27	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a random graph?	Jannes Münchmeyer (HU)
November 3	TU MA316	14:00	What is... algebraic statistics?	Carlos Améndola (TU)
November 10	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a finite element method?	Monika Eisenmann (TU)
November 17			No what-is (BMS soft-skills seminar)
November 24	Urania	13:00	What is... a spectrahedron?	Mario Kummer (MPI Leipzig)
December 1			No what-is (BMS soft-skills seminar)
December 8	TU MA316	14:00	What is... monomial tropical cones for multicriteria optimization?	Georg Loho (TU)
December 15	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the Teichmüller space of a surface?	Lara Skuppin (TU)
December 22			No what-is (Last day of classes)
January 12	TU MA212	16:00	What are... large deviations?	András Tóbiás (TU)
January 19	BMS Loft	13:00	What are... Maxwell's equations?	Marek Gluza (FU)
January 26			No what-is
February 2	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a homotopy invariant?	Alexander Müller (FU)
February 9			No what-is (Week before exams)
February 16	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... an inverse problem?	Héctor Andrade Loarca (TU)
February 20	BMS Loft	10:00	What is... molecular dynamics? (BMS Days)	Mohsen Sadeghi (FU)

Summer Semester 2017

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
April 21	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... Hamiltonian dynamics?	Alexander Fauck (HU)
April 28	TU MA212	14:00	What is... triangulated spheres and Pachner moves?	Giulia Codenotti (FU)
May 5	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... variational inference?	Patrick Jähnichen (HU)
May 12			No what-is (I, Scientist)
May 19	Potsdam	14:00	No what-is (Euler Lecture)
May 26			No what-is (After holiday)
June 2	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... Iwasawa Theory?	Marcin Lara (FU)
June 9			No what-is (BMS soft-kills seminar)
June 16	HU	13:00	No what-is (von Mises Lecture)
June 23			No what-is (BMS soft-kills seminar)
June 30	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... BPP, RP and the other probabilistic complexity classes?	Josué Tonelli Cueto (TU)
July 7	TU MA212	13:00	What is... a condition number?	Paul Breiding (TU)
July 14	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... Onsager's conjecture?	Robert Lasarzik (TU)
July 21	FU	16.00	What is... Gröbner Basis doing in Sudoku?	Irem Portakal (FU)

Winter Semester 2016/17

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
October 21	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... mixed integer linear programming?	Stanley Schade (FU/ZIB)
November 4	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a modular form?	Antareep Mandal (HU)
November 18			No what-is	BMS 10th Anniversary
December 2			No what-is
December 16	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... formal mathematics?	Martin Skrodzki (FU)
January 13	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... Randomness Good For?	Shagnik Das (FU)
January 27	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the length of a potato?	Josué Tonelli Cueto (TU)
February 10	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a (Discontinuous) Galerkin Finite Element Method?	Lasse Hinrichsen (FU)
February 21	BMS Loft	10:00	What is ... Linear Programming?	Georg Loho (FU)

Summer Semester 2016

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
April 29	BMS Loft	13:30	What is ... symplectic geometry?	Mara Ungureanu (HU)
May 13	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a Chow Ring?	Fei Ren (FU)
May 27	Potsdam	14:00	No what-is (Euler Lecture)
June 3	HU	13:00	No what-is (von Mises Lecture)
June 17	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... an Eigenvector of a Tensor?	Kathlén Kohn (TU)
July 8	Harnack-Haus	13:00	What is ... a Sphere Packing?	Albert Haase (FU)

Winter Semester 2015/16

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
October 16	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... representation theory?	Patrick Da Silva (HU)
October 30	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a period?	Filippo Nuccio (Université St. Étienne)
November 13	TU Berlin	13:00	What is ... reciprocity?	Jan Hofmann (FU)
November 27	BMS Loft	13:00	No What-is talk
December 11	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... Discrete Fourier Analysis?	Christoph Spiegel (FU)
January 15	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a p-adic number?	Claudius Heyer (HU)
January 29	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a stochastic process?	Stefan Rüdrich (FU)
February 5	FU Berlin, SR031	16:00	What is ... an Origami Constructible Number?	Josué Tonelli Cueto (HU)
February 12	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the Disjoint Paths Problem?	Miriam Schlöter (TU)
February 16	BMS Loft	10:00	What is ... a Rational Function?	Irem Portakal (FU)

Summer Semester 2015

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
April 24	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the complexity of matrix multiplication?	Pierre Lairez (TU)
May 08	TU (MA 212)	13:00	What is ... a supercritical percolation cluster?	Nguyen Tuan Anh (TU)
May 15			No what-is
May 22	Potsdam	14:00	No what-is (Euler Lecture)
May 29			No what-is (Workshop on Nonlinear Algebra)
June 05	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a transfer operator?	Adam Nielsen (ZIB)
June 12	BMS Loft	13:30	What is ... group homology?	Peter Patzt (FU)
June 19	HU	16:00	What is ... the heat kernel?	Asilya Suleymanova (HU)
June 26	HU 0101	14:00	No what-is (von Mises Lecture)
July 03	FU/TU/HU	16:00
July 10	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... Ramsey Theory?	Manh Tuan Tran (FU)

Winter Semester 2014/2015

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
Oct 24	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a syzygy?	Daniele Agostini (HU)
Oct 31	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... an Ehrhart Polynomial?	Hannes Pollehn (TU)
Nov 14	BMS Loft	13:30	What is ... a CAT(0) space?	Sebastian Meinert (FU)
Nov 28	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a (complex) hyperplane arrangement?	Arnau Padrol Sureda (FU)
Dec 5	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... the ham sandwich theorem?	Florian Frick (TU)
Dec 12	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a Hamiltonian system?	Jonathan Youett (FU)
Jan 9	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... sparse and redundant representation modeling for image processing?	Wang-Q Lim (TU)
Jan 16	TU MA313	16:00	What is ... a van Kampen Obstruction Cocycle?	Isaac Mabillard (IST Austria)
Jan 23	FU SR025/026	13:00	What is ... the probabilistic method?	Shagnik Das (FU)
Feb 6	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... (algebraic) complexity theory?	Jesko Hüttenhain (TU)

Summer Semester 2014

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
Apr 25	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the Navier-Stokes equation?	Ariane Papke (FU)
May 9	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a random graph?	Adam Streck (FU)
May 16	Potsdam	14:00	Euler Lecture
May 23	HU 0311	13:15	What is ... a partial zeta function?	Miguel Grados (HU)
Jun 6	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... an isohedral tiling?	Michael Joos (TU)
Jun 13	HU 0101	14:00	von Mises Lecture
Jun 20	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the moduli spaces of curves?	Giulia Battiston (FU)
Jun 27	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem?	Lucas Braune (IMPA Rio de Janeiro)
Jul 4	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a Riemannian manifold?	Lara Skuppin (TU)
Jul 11	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... Time-of-Death Modeling?	Jonas Krone and Zoi Tokoutsi (FU)
Jul 18	BMS Loft	13:30	What is ... a gyroid?	Ulrich Reitebuch (FU)

Winter Semester 2013/2014

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
Oct 18	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... combinatorial rigidity?	Louis Theran (FU)
Oct 25	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a hyperreal number?	Ugur Dogan (HU)
Nov 1	BMS Loft	13:30	What is ... a graph limit?	Codrut Grosu (FU)
Nov 8	TU MA742	16:00	What is ... the relation between Laplace transform and Z-transform?	Deniz Genlik (TU)
Nov 15	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the conformal geometry of surfaces?	Wayne Lam (TU)
Nov 22	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... mean curvature flow and their self-shrinkers?	Keita Kunikawa (Tohoku Univ)
Nov 29	TU MA544	13:00	What is ... a Wasserstein distance?	Matthias Liero (WIAS)
Dec 6	HU 1.023	16:00	What is .... a Grassmannian?	Eva Martinez (HU)
Dec 13	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the Burger's equation and heat equation?	Juan Camilo Orduz (HU)
Jan 10	ZIB	13:00	What is ... the representation theory of finite groups?	Peter Patzt (FU)
Jan 17	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a 4D object?	Faniry Razafindrazaka (FU)
Jan 24	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... the spacetime constraints paradigm?	Christoph von Tycowicz (FU)
Jan 31	BMS Loft	13:15	What is ... a Carleson operator?	Yizhi Sun (TU)

Summer Semester 2013

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
Apr 19	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a higher order tensor decomposition?	Max Pfeffer (TU)
Apr 26	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... an L-function?	Miguel Grados (HU)
May 3	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the Nash embedding theorem?	Ariane Beier (Potsdam)
May 31	Potsdam		Euler Lecture
Jun 7	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a subgradient?	Elias Pipping (FU)
Jun 14	HU 0119		von Mises Lecture
Jun 21	BMS Loft	13:00	What are ... abstract functions and weak convergence?	Christian Kreusler (TU)
Jun 28	TU MA313	16:00	What is ... matrix completion?	Franz Király (TU)
Jul 5	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a self-avoiding random walk?	Giovanni Conforti (HU)
Jul 12	BMS Loft	13:15	What is ... a variational inequality?	Carsten Gräser (FU)

Winter Semester 2012/2013

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
Oct 19	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a Smoke Ring?	Felix Jakob Knöppel (TU)
Oct 26	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... persistent homology?	Mijail Guillemard (TU)
Nov 2	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a quaternion algebra?	Christian Wald (HU)
Nov 9	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a Bruhat-Tits tree?	Inder (HU)
Nov 16			RTG Stochastic Analysis Colloquium
Nov 23	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a regular map?	Faniry Razafindrazaka (FU)
Nov 30	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a spacetime singularity?	Phillipo Lappicy (FU)
Dec 7	HU 1.023	17:30	What is ... a Hodge locus?	Ananyo Dan (HU)
Dec 14	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... SU(2) and why does it double-cover SO(3)?	Florian Frick (TU)
Jan 11			IRTG Moduli and Automorphic Forms Colloquium
Jan 18	TU MA313	16:00	What is ... a quasiconformal mapping?	Isabella Thiesen (TU)
Jan 25	BMS Loft	13:15	What is ... a j-invariant?	Emre Sertoz (HU)
Feb 1	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a monotonicity formula?	Ahmad Afuni (FU)
Feb 8	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a rational tangle?	Silvia de Toffoli (TU)
Feb 15	TU MA313	16:00	What is ... a Palindromic Eigenvalue Problem?	Christian Schröder (TU)
Feb 19	BMS Loft	10:00	What is... a positional game?	Dennis Clemens (FU)

Summer Semester 2012

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker	Video
April 13	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... a spectral method?	Maciek Korzec (TU)
April 20	BMS Loft	13:00	What is... a dissipative weak solution?	Romain Nguyen (FU)
April 27	HU 1.023	14:00	What is ... a path-following method?	Jennifer Rasch (HU)
May 4	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... software development?	Kristian Rother
May 11	Potsdam		Euler Lecture
May 18	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... a differential inclusion?	Shahrad Jamshidi (FU)
May 25	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a configuration space?	Dror Atariah (FU)
June 1	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a problem in mathematical finance?	Julio Backhoff (HU)
June 8	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a group action?	Mikola Lysenko (UW Madison)
June 15	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... a Dirac operator?	Juan Orduz (HU)
June 22	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... the Fabricius-Bjerre theorem?	Felix Günther (TU)	play
June 29	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a group representation?	Giovanni de Gaetano (HU)
July 6	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... Brownian motion?	Adrian Gonzalez Casanova (TU)
July 13	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... Ext and its applications?	Hannah Enders (HU)

Winter Semester 2011/2012

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker
October 21	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... diffusion?	Maciek Korzec (TU)
October 28	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... Tropical Geometry?	Cesar Ceballos (FU)
November 4	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ...a zeta function?	David Ouwehand (HU)
November 11			Kovalevskaya Lecture
November 18	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a Gröbner basis in a polynomial ring?	Andre Mialebama (FU)
November 25	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... the Lagrangian relaxation of an integer program?	Jonad Pulaj (ZIB)
December 2	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a lattice in a Lie group good for?	Barbara Jung (HU)
December 9	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... propagating interfaces and level set methods?	Antoine Laurain (HU)
January 6	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a shearlet?	Wang-Q Lim (TU)
January 20	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... an independent transversal?	Lothar Narins (FU)
January 27	TU MA004	16:00	What is ... the connection between the Kantian Intuition of Mathematical Objects and Diagrams?	Özge Ekin (FU)
February 3	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... Risk?	Samuel Drapeau (HU)
February 10	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a Feynman integral?	Christian Bogner (HU)
February 22	BMS Loft		BMS Days: What is ... the fundamental group and covering spaces?	Fabian Lenhardt (FU)

Summer Semester 2011

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker	Video
April 15	BMS Loft	11:45	What is ... a Modular form?	Anil Aryasomayajula (HU)	play
April 22			Easter Holiday
April 29	BMS Loft	12:00	What is ... the Kuhn-Tucker theorem?	Thomas Lehmann (ZIB)	play
May 6	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... an infinitesimal?	Thomas El Khatib (TU)	play
May 13	BMS Loft	12:00	What is ... a graph?	Daniel Heldt (TU)
May 20	Potsdam		Euler Lecture
May 27	BMS Loft	12:00	What is ... the direct method in the calculus of variations?	Beatrice Bugert (WIAS)
June 3			Holiday
June 10	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a moduli space?	Fabian Müller (HU)	play
June 17	FU A6 007/8	16:00	What is ... a sheaf?	Nikolai Beck (FU)
June 24	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... linear programming?	Ambros Gleixner (ZIB)
July 1	Adlershof		Richard von Mises Lecture
July 8	BMS Loft	13:00	What is ... a Green's function?	Marcel Ortgiese (TU)
July 15	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a matroid?	Markus Hihn (HU)

Winter Semester 2010/2011

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker	Video
October 22	BMS Loft	14:00	What is ... a Catalan Number?	Jean-Philippe Labbé (TU)
October 29	TU MA212	16:00	What is ... Hilbert's 17th Problem?	Moritz Schmitt (TU)
November 5	BMS Loft	15:30	What is ... a stable marriage?	Ágnes Cseh (TU)	play
November 12	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... a selflocator?	Heinrich Mellmann (HU)
November 19	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... a multifunction?	Klebert Kentia (HU)	play
November 26	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... the origin of elliptic functions?	Barbara Jung (HU)	play
December 3	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... the probabilistic method?	Anita Liebenau (FU)	play
December 10	BMS Loft	12:45	What is ... cognitive neuroscience?	Roland Friedrich (HU)
January 7	FU SR031	16:30	What is ... a derived category?	Andreas Hochenegger (FU)
January 14	BMS Loft	12:45	What is ... a Diophantine equation?	Stefan Keil (HU)	play
January 21	TU MA212	16:30	What is ... a random walk on a network?	Natasa Djurdjevac (FU)
January 28	BMS Loft	12:45	What is ... math blogging?	Felix Breuer (FU)
February 4	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... the exit problem?	Han Lie (HU)
February 11	BMS Loft	12:45	What is ... P vs NP?	Jannik Matuschke (TU)	play
February 18	TU MA 212	16:30	What is ... a weak derivative?	Stefan W. von Deylen (FU)
February 22	BMS Loft	9:30	What is ... a matroid?	Matthias Lenz (TU)

Summer Semester 2010

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker	Video
April 16	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... Hilbert's 16th problem?	Eyal Ron (FU)	play
April 23	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Theta Body?	Annie Raymond (TU)
April 30	TU MA212	17:00	What is ... a Killing vector field?	Mimi Tsuruga (FU)	play
May 7	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Fourier Series?	Jerry Gagelman (TU)
May 14	HU 1.023	16:00	What is ... the big deal with math and music?	Aaron Greicius (HU)
May 21	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a zeta function?	Nicholas Schmidt (HU)
May 28	Potsdam	14:00	Euler Lecture
June 4	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a linear system of plane curves?	Angela Ortega (HU)
June 11	HU 1.023	16:00	What is.. the classifying space of a category?	Stephan Müller (HU)
June 18	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... Polya theory?	Emerson Leon (TU)
June 25	FU SR031	16:30	What is ... a Hybrid Automata?	Shahrad Jamshidi (FU)	play
July 2	TU MA851	10:30	What are ... large deviations?	Hanna Döring (TU)
July 9	FU SR031	16:00	What is ... phylogenetic algebraic geometry?	Kaie Kubjas (FU)	play

Winter Semester 2009/2010

Date	Location	Time	Title	Speaker	Video
October 16	FU SR031	4pm	What is ... a Gröbner Basis?	René Birkner (FU)
October 23	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... Algorithmic Differentiation?	Hernan Leovey (HU)
October 30	TU MA 212	5pm	What is ... a Facet Massacre?	Bruno Benedetti (TU)
November 6	BMS Loft	3:30	What is ... a Self-Avoiding Random Walk?	Noemi Kurt (TU)
November 13	FU SR031	4pm	What is ... Morse Theory?	Carsten Schultz (TU)	play
November 20	FU SR031	12:30	What is ... a Moduli Space?	Nicola Tarasca (HU)
November 27	TU MA 212	5pm	What is ... a Quantum Group?	Inna Lukyanenko (TU)	play
December 4	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Seifert Surface?	Silvia de Toffoli (TU)
December 11	TU MA 041	2:30	Introduction to Tropical Geometry	Christian Haase (FU)
December 18	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Rough Path?	Joscha Diehl (HU)
January 8	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Geodesic?	Tobias Pfeiffer & Dror Atariah (FU)
January 15	FU SR031	4pm	What is ... a Semimartingale?	Plamen Turkedjiev (HU)	play
January 22	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Language Game?	Hartwig Mayer (HU)	play
January 29	TU MA 212	5pm	What is ... Multigrid?	Oliver Sander (FU)
February 5	BMS Loft	12:30	What is ... a Graph Associahedron?	Carsten Lange (FU)

Summer semester 2009

Date and place	Title	Speaker
April 24, @BMS,	What is... the Adaptive Finite Element Method?	Joscha Gedicke
May 1	(General Holiday)	---
May 8 @BMS	What is.. the Dedekind zeta function?	Anna Posingies (HU)
May 15 BMS@TU-lounge	What is.. entropy?	Yvon Vignaud
May 22 @FU	What is ... a Goppa Code?	Nathan Ilten
May 29	Euler Lecture @Potsdam	---
June 5 @FU	What is... a flag vector?	Axel Werner (ZIB)
June 12 @Adlershof	Mises Lecture	---
June 19 @BMS	What is ... the field with one element?	Laura Hinsch (FU Berlin)
June 26 @FU	What is ... the square root of a graph?	Robin Scholz (Potsdam)
July 3 @FU	What is ... topological dynamics?	Peter Krautzberger
July 10	BMS Summer Outing @Golm	---
July 17 @FU

Winter semester 2008 / 2009

Datum und Ort	Thema	Vortragender
17. Okt., @BMS-Fridays	Vorstellung des Seminars (@ BMS-Friday)	N.N.
24. Okt., @FU	What is... the Random Graph?	Stefanie Frick (FU Berlin)
31. Okt., @BMS-Fridays	What is... Homotopical Algebra? (@ BMS-Friday)	Anton Dochtermann (TU Berlin)
07. Nov., @FU	What is... deformation?	Nathan Ilten (FU Berlin)
14. Nov., @BMS-Fridays	What is an elliptic curve? / Basic Notions in algebraic and arithmetic geometry	Anna Pippich / Fritz Hörmann (HU Berlin)
21. Nov., @FU	What are ... loops and the fundamental group?	Dror Atariah
28. Nov., @BMS-Fridays	What is ... geometric knot theory?	Barbara Jablonska (TU Berlin)
05. Dez., @FU	What is ... Hindman's theorem?	Peter Krautzberger
12. Dez., @BMS-Fridays	What is ... spectral expansion?	Anna Pippich (HU)
19. Dez., @FU	What is ... similarity of shapes?	Daria Schymura (FU)
09. Jan., @BMS-Fridays	What is ... the P vs NP problem?	Matthias Lenz (TU)
16. Jan., @FU	What is ... an averaging principle?	Carsten Hartmann (FU)
23. Jan., @BMS-Fridays	What is ... the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture?	Fritz Hörmann
30. Jan., @FU	What is ... a Fraisse construction?	Artem Chernikov
06. Feb., @BMS-Fridays	What is ... Helly's theorem?	Mareike Massow (TU)
13. Feb., @FU	What is... Brownian motion?	Plamen Turkedjiev

Summer semester 2008

Datum und Ort	Thema	Vortragender
Donnerstag, 17. Juli, 16 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 025/026	What is... the chromatic number of the plane?	Michael Payne
Donnerstag, 3. Juli, 10 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... das Kontinuum und was ist sein Problem?	Gido Scharfenberger-Fabian
Donnerstag, 26. Juni, 10 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... eine sinnvolle Erweiterung der Halbgruppe der natürlichen Zahlen?	Peter Krautzberger
Donnerstag, 19. Juni, 10 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... eine sinnvolle Verallgemeinerung des Zwischenwertsatz?	Felix Breuer
Donnerstag, 12. Juni, 10 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... eine Garbe?	Nathan Ilten
Donnerstag, 5.Juni, 10 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... die Schälung eines Polytops?	Frederik von Heymann
Donnerstag, 29. Mai, 10 Uhr c.t., A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... der Ricci-Fluss?	Tobias Marxen
Donnerstag, 22. Mai, 17 Uhr, A6 Raum 031	Was ist eigentlich... ein Ultrafilter? (und was kann man damit anstellen?)	Peter Krautzberger