This is the current homepage of the UW Student Algebraic Geometry Seminar. The seminar will be held on Thursdays at 3:00PM in PDL C-401 during the Spring 2026 quarter. The goal of the seminar is to foster engagement with modern research in algebraic geometry (broadly interpreted) and provide a forum for graduate students to present and discuss aspects of their work and readings. The seminar will also feature some talks by faculty in the department. If you would like to give a talk or have any questions, please contact Daniel Rostamloo (rostam[at]uw[dot]edu).
Talks for the Spring 2026 Quarter
Click on a title to reveal the corresponding abstract. Titles and abstracts may appear first on the math department calendar.
| April 2 | Michele PerniceDerived Azumaya algebras and Gm-gerbesIn this talk, we will revisit the classical relation between Gm-gerbes and Azumaya algebras, using Toën and Lurie machinery. Moreover, we will try to briefly talk about how, in the non-normal case, the derived Azumaya algebras also carry the datum of a twisted t-structure. |
| April 9 | Tyson KlingnerCanonical Model of SurfacesLast talk we introduced the Minimal Model Program for smooth projective surfaces. This talk will be an extension where we introduce the Canonical Model of such a surface and compare the minimal and canonical models. |
| April 16 | Michael ZengOriented Cohomology Rings of BlowupsOriented cohomology theories provide a general framework for refined topological invariants of schemes, which admits intersection-theory-type calculus. The Chow ring, the $K_0$-ring, and algebraic cobordism of Levine–Morel are all instances of such theories. In this talk, we give a presentation of the oriented cohomology ring of the blowup of a smooth scheme along a smooth center. We compute explicit examples of such presentations for the cases of del Pezzo surfaces and the blowup of $\mathbb{P}^5$ along the Veronese surface, the latter of which can be identified with the moduli space of complete conics. We demonstrate that one can recover solutions to enumerative problems such as Steiner’s $3264$ conics in an arbitrary oriented cohomology theory. Finally, we give a presentation to the algebraic cobordism ring of $\overline M_{0,n}$, which generalizes Keel’s presentation of the Chow ring. |
| April 23 | Daniel Halpern-Leistner (Cornell)An overview of intrinsic moduli theoryTwo different approaches to moduli theory in algebraic geometry have developed in parallel since the 1960’s: The intrinsic approach attempts to describe a moduli problem as an algebraic stack, and to generalize the notions of algebraic geometry in order to study the geometry of this stack directly. The other approach is to approximate your moduli problem as the classification of orbits for the action of a reductive group on a projective variety (e.g., a Quot scheme), then turn the crank of geometric invariant theory (GIT) to identify a semistability condition and construct a moduli space, and finally to re-express the resulting semistability condition more intrinsically. Over the last decade, work of myself and others has unified these two approaches in a package of theorems that allow one to study semistability conditions, moduli spaces, and canonical stratifications all in the intrinsic context. This has shed new light on several moduli problems of interest in algebraic geometry, such as the moduli of Fano varieties in higher dimensions or the moduli of decorated principal bundles on curves. I will survey techniques that have been developed to apply the general machinery in several contexts, as well as contexts where new techniques are needed. |
| April 30 | Vivasvat Vatatmaja (UIUC)TBATBA |
| May 7 | Lorenzo BottiglioneTBATBA |
| May 14 | Mal DolorfinoTBATBA |
| May 21 | Ting GongTBATBA |
| May 28 | TBATBATBA |
| June 4 | TBATBATBA |
The seminar was founded in Fall 2023 by Arkamouli Debnath, who also organized it through Fall 2024. The old seminar homepage can be found here. Since January 2025, it has been organized by Daniel Rostamloo. The seminar was supported in part by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences during the 2025-2026 academic year.