17Tue
Coordinator: Dr. Praveen Pathak
https://badal.hbcse.tifr.res.in/index.php/s/5gqo9f9gTPMkT6K
The first camp of NIUS Physics 2025 will be from, June 17, 2025 to July 2, 2025. Around 71 undergraduate students are expected to participate.
The camp will feature lectures aimed at introducing students to a wide range of current research areas, including theoretical physics, experimental physics, and an overview of machine learning/data science applications in physics. Additionally, a laboratory course will be conducted, based on the Experimental Problem Solving approach.
27Fri
Coordinator: Prof. Aniket Sule
Political campaign strategies: A mathematical modelling perspective
Prof. Natasa Dragovic
Asst. Prof., Dept. of Mathematics, University of St. Thomas, MN, USA
To win elections, politicians adopt strategies to make themselves appeal to voters. In the American two-party system, these strategies are often driven by extensive polling and careful positioning of one candidate relative to their opponent. And yet, sometimes the same strategy that helps a candidate win in one election causes them to lose another. In a recent work, we explored a simplified mathematical model of this political process and uncover unexpected phenomena and mechanisms that we compare to real-life political strategies and outcomes. The surprise is that the change in the optimal candidate position can, in certain circumstances, be discontinuous. The underlying mathematical mechanism is a blue-sky bifurcation. I will discuss these different strategies in the talk. I will also present a web-based app that one can use to understand the model better. I will finish the talk with some recent new results, where we looked into the dynamically changing opinions and strategies under this model.
Prof. Natasa Dragovic is a mathematician currently at University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, USA. Her research work is in the area of probability theory. She completed her PhD from University of Texas at Austin and was Norbert Wiener Assistant Professor at Tufts University, before her current employment.
Prof. Dragovic is also the general secretary of International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA). She represented Serbia and won medals in Astronomy Olympiads in multiple years and later also served as a leader of US team for IOAA.