"Acquisitions and Relational Management Practices" | Ameet Morjaria (MIT Sloan)

Speaker: Stefano Martiniani (NYU)Title: Though This Be Disorder, Yet There Is Order in’tAbstract:Understanding the relationship between structure and properties is crucial to designing materials with novel functions. Crystals have proven to be a highly versatile platform for engineering functions, as the periodicity of their atomic arrangement greatly facilitates the prediction and optimization of their properties. However, not all properties can be realized with periodic structures. Correlated disordered media — materials that do not exhibit conventional forms of long-range order — can achieve transport properties unattainable in periodic systems, such as the formation of isotropic photonic bandgaps, which are highly desirable in optoelectronic applications. By the very nature of disorder, identifying principles and approaches to engineer disordered functional materials is very challenging — in fact, what does it even mean to “engineer disorder”? In this talk, I will show how we established a new state of the art in the design of correlated disordered structures. This approach led us to the discovery of a new class of disordered functional materials that we termed “gyromorphs”, which uniquely combine liquidlike translational disorder with quasi-long-range rotational order, induced by a ring of delta peaks in their structure factor. We predict that gyromorphs outperform all existing isotropic photonic bandgap materials, paving the way for fine control over optical properties. Finally, I will provide an outlook and discuss recent results on how we are leveraging noisy processes to build generative AI models that will accelerate the discovery of novel materials across the periodic table. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” (Hamlet II.ii).References: 1. A. Shih, M. Casiulis, S. Martiniani, Fast generation of spectrally shaped disorder, Phys. Rev. E, 110(3), 034122 (2024) 2. M. Casiulis, A. Shih, S. Martiniani, Gyromorphs: a new class of functional disordered materials, arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.09023 (2024) 3. P. Hoellmer, T. Egg, M.M. Martirossyan, E. Fuemmeler, Z. Shui, A. Gupta, P. Prakash, A. Roitberg, M. Liu, G. Karypis, M. Transtrum, R.G. Hennig, E.B. Tadmor, S. Martiniani, Open Materials Generation with Stochastic Interpolants, Proc. 42nd Int. Conf. Mach. Learn. (ICML), PMLR 267 (2025) 4. M. Martirossyan, T. Egg, P. Höllmer, G. Karypis, M. Transtrum, A. Roitberg, M. Liu, R. Hennig, E.B. Tadmor, S. Martiniani, All that structure matches does not glitter, accepted at NeurIPS 2025, arXiv:2509.12178 (2025)

Ten minutes for your mind@2:50 every day at 2:50 pm in multiple time zones:Europa@2:50, EET, Athens, Helsinki (UTC+2) (7:50 am EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88298032734Atlantica@2:50, EST, New York, Toronto (UTC-4) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85349851047Pacifica@2:50, PST, Los Angeles, Vancouver (UTC=7) (5:50 pm EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85743543699Almost everything works better again if you unplug it for a bit, including your mind. Stop by and unplug. Get the benefits of mindfulness without the fuss.@2:50 meets at the same time every single day for ten minutes of quiet together.No pre-requisite, no registration needed.Visit the website to view all @2:50 time zones each day.at250.org or at250.mit.edu

Speaker: Ruijie Yang (University of Kansas)Title: p-adic zeta function, Hodge theory and hyperplane arrangementsAbstract:In 1988, Igusa observed a mysterious relationship between the poles of the p-adic zeta function and the roots of the Bernstein-Sato polynomial. This relationship was later formulated precisely by Denef and Loeser and is now known as the Strong Monodromy Conjecture. In the special case of hyperplane arrangements, Budur, Mustațǎ and Teitler proposed the n/d conjecture in 2009, which asserts that if a polynomial defines a central, essential, and indecomposable hyperplane arrangement of degree d in C^n, then -n/d must be a root of its b-function. They showed that the n/d conjecture implies the Strong Monodromy Conjecture for hyperplane arrangements.In this talk, I will discuss my recent joint work with Dougal Davis on a proof of the n/d conjecture, which draws on the theory of complex mixed Hodge modules of Sabbah and Schnell, as well as our new ''wall-crossing'' theory for V-filtrations of holonomic D-modules along local complete intersections. The latter is inspired by the recent breakthrough by Davis-Vilonen on the Schmid-Vilonen conjecture, which characterizes the unitarity of a representation of a real Lie group via Hodge theory. Furthermore, we also prove that the pole order of the Igusa zeta function is less than or equal to the multiplicity of the b-function along the real part of the pole. If time permits, I will discuss how to extend this idea to prove the Strong Monodromy Conjecture for multi-arrangements, as well as the multivariate n/d conjecture, both proposed by Budur in 2015.

MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM) invites you to our Distinguished Speaker event on the future of the defense industrial base.This session will explore how new technologies, manufacturing innovation, and industrial strategy are reshaping national security. Speakers will also examine the critical role the next generation of technical leaders will play in strengthening the defense industrial base.Agenda3:00–3:45 PMKeith Flynn, SVP of Manufacturing, Anduril Industries, in discussion with Dr. Ben Armstrong, Executive Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center3:45–4:30 PMPanel DiscussionSean Holly, CEO, AlloyChris Montferret, Vice President Strategy & Business Development, GDMS Maritime & Strategic SystemsLt. Col. Gregory "LAB" Bieler, US Air ForceJulie Shah, Department Head of MIT AeroAstro, will moderate the panelRegistration is required to attend.

Speaker: Mikhail Sodin (Tel Aviv University)Title: A curious Lagrange-Ivanov-Yomdin-type lemmaAbstract: Suppose 𝑓 is an 𝑚-smooth function on the unit ball that is small (for instance, vanishes) on an epsilon-net 𝐸 for a sufficiently small epsilon. Then the maximum of 𝑓 is controlled by the 𝐿1- norm of its 𝑚 − 𝑡ℎ derivative and its uniform norm on 𝐸. This estimate is dimensionless. The proof is not long and uses only undergraduate analysis.The talk is based on an ongoing joint work with Aleksei Kulikov and Fedor Nazarov on multi-dimensional Fourier uniqueness.