Cynthia Vinzant

Office: 1040 Evans Hall

Email: cvinzant (at) math.berkeley.edu

I'm a third year PhD student in math department at UC Berkeley. I'm working with Bernd Sturmfels on connections between optimization and algebra, specifically semidefinite programming and real algebraic geometry. This is work in part of a focused research group on semidefinite optimization and convex algebraic geometry.

Writings and such

Real radical initial ideals
Degree stability of SOS modulo an ideal (slides from a talk at UC Davis 5/21/09).
Lower bounds for optimal alignments of binary sequences. Discrete Applied Math. 157:15 (2009), pp. 3341-3346.
Parametric sequence alignment (slides from a talk at SFSU 9/19/08)
Pattern avoidance in permutations (My senior thesis at Oberlin College).
Mathematical approaches to the pure parsimony problem, with Paul Blain, Jorge Silva, and Al Holder. (appearing in"Clustering Challenges in Biological Networks")

Fall 2009

Algebraic Geometry with Paul Vojta
Discrete Mathematics Seminar, organized by Alex Engström and Raman Sanyal
Tropical Geometry at MSRI

Spring 2009

Tropical Geometry with Bernd Sturmfels
Combinatorial Commutative Algebra with Federico Ardila (at SF State)
Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization with Alper Atamtürk (IEOR)
Discrete Mathematics Seminar, organized by Anne Shiu and Raman Sanyal

Unbounded Representation

UREP is a new graduate student group focused on promoting diversity within the department. One of the projects we startes this year in a speaker series called "Career Talks" on the different career paths available after graduate school. I help organize this along with Anne Shiu and Trevor Potter.

Teaching

In Fall 2007 and Spring 2008, I was a GSI for Math 1B.

I'm a former staff member (2006, 2007) of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics, a summer program for mathematically inclined high school students.

Here are some fun slides from an ARML talk on Hercules and the Hydra.