TCNJ Alumus Pamela Kosick ’02 gave a Departmental Colloquium on “Finite Commutative Semifields” on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. Dr. Kosick received her doctorate in mathematics from the University of Delaware and is currently an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Here’s the abstract of her talk:
Abstract: The braid groups are among the best understood infinite groups. The first half of this talk will discuss what the braid groups are and some of what is known about them. Then we will move up one dimension to talk about the group of loops. While there are close connections to the braid groups, at the moment the group of loops appears to be more complicated to work with. As is probably clear, the emphasis in this talk will be on examples more than general results.