50 episodes listed below
The seminar room, recorded: from max algebra to wireless firmware
Each episode captures an academic talk, usually opened by a brief introduction of the speaker and built around slides, formal definitions and worked examples. Subjects swing from the periodicity of matrix powers in max algebra to binding a network interface through the NetMap API, with wireless standards and air traffic modelling in between.
PRESS PLAY
This feed brings the Hamilton Institute's seminar room to the listener, one recorded talk at a time. The format hardly varies. Someone introduces the speaker, often with a line about their earlier work, and the talk proceeds through slides, definitions and examples, with questions from the room along the way or at the end. What varies is the subject, and it varies a great deal. On the mathematical side, Sergei Sergeyev of the University of Birmingham calls max algebra a strange science and offers to introduce it to anyone who has not heard of it. He then turns to periodicity in the powers of max-algebraic matrices, using a two by two case to show that the transient of the non-critical part depends on the entries, and brings in what he calls the CSR construction. State Constrained Optimal Control is just as careful, defining a function that measures how far a trajectory strays from its state constraint over time. Its closing remarks reach toward stochastic control, the Hamilton-Jacobi equation and game theory. Applied modelling sits in the middle. In ROMA: Random Overlook Mastering ATFM, Carlo Lancia presents a point process for arrivals at large hubs such as airports and suggests it could stretch to data packets, outpatient scheduling and crane handling at commercial docks. He is candid that one case of the model is completely unstable and matches no real feature of the phenomenon, repeating that it is just a model. Near the end he notes that people at Eurocontrol would rather remove the randomness from the process altogether. The engineering talks are the most hands-on. Very High Speed Networking in VMs and Bare Metal walks through the NetMap API much as a programmer would use it: open a special device, bind the returned file descriptor to an interface with an ioctl, and detach that interface from the host stack. That session ran over, and anyone with questions was invited to stay on. In Playing with Standards: the IEEE 802.11 case, Francesco Gringoli of the University of Brescia presents open source firmware for Broadcom cards, built by reverse engineering. Machine-to-Machine in Smart Cities & Smart Grids Vision, Technology & Applications grants that machines are poor poets, then makes the case for automating meter reading. Its speaker is blunt about claims of hundreds of metres of line-of-sight range, saying real rooms allow more like a dozen, and sketches a time-frequency scheduled scheme called 15.4e in which nodes know when to wake and on which frequency. Little here is pitched at newcomers, although Sergeyev does pause to set up his subject from the start. The reward is hearing researchers explain their own work in their own order. For a first listen, systems-minded listeners might start with the NetMap talk, and anyone curious about unusual algebra with the max algebra seminar.
Made for: Suits a listener comfortable with graduate-level mathematics or systems programming who wants to hear researchers explain their own work, from matrix powers in max algebra to fast networking in virtual machines and on bare metal.
What sets it apart: There is no host-led conversation here. The episodes are recorded research talks, introductions and room questions included, so abstract mathematics such as max algebra sits beside hands-on work on wireless firmware and packet networking in one feed.
The Hamilton Institute is a multi-disciplinary research centre established at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth in November 2001. The Institute seeks to provide a bridge between mathematics and its applications in ICT and biology.In this podcast feed, we make accessible some of the best seminars held by members of the Hamilton Institute, visitors or guest speakers.Futhermore, it will also contain the lectures give as part of the 'Network Mathematics Graduate Programme'.
Airport arrivals in one seminar, max algebra in another; your scratch paper is the recurring guest.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A technical seminar on periodic structure in matrix powers under max algebra.
Periodicity of Matrix Powers in Max Algebra takes on a tightly framed question: what kind of recurring behavior emerges when matrices are multiplied again and again in max algebra?
A clear look at NetMap, 10 gigabit line rate, and the kernel boundaries that shape packet performance.
Luigi Rizzotto frames very high-speed networking as a practical engineering problem: how to make a commodity operating system and a 10 gigabit card move packets fast enough, even at the smallest packet sizes.
A focused queueing model for airport arrivals, sharpened by its own practical limits.
Carlo Lancia turns aircraft arrivals into a queueing problem, using a point process to predict traffic at large airport hubs. The talk opens with one hour of arrivals at Dubai International Airport, where aircraft approach in tight, nearly deterministic patterns and follow…
A grounded look at why machines fit repetitive metering, fast decisions, and carefully scheduled wireless networks.
Machine-to-machine communication is framed through work people tolerate but should not have to repeat: reporting household gas, electricity, and water use, then reacting to data faster than a person reasonably can. That practical pairing gives the episode a clear center.
A precise, rigorous talk on turning state-constraint violations into usable distance estimates for optimal control theory.
Richard Winter's talk on state-constrained optimal control stays close to a precise mathematical question: how to measure the extent to which a state trajectory leaves its constraint region.
IPv6 operations, from RFCs to real networks.
Network reality, from packets upward.
Enterprise tech made operationally clear.
Packet-level detail across modern infrastructure.
Infrastructure talk across the Packet Pushers network.
Real-world context for network design.
Hamilton Institute Seminars hosts Sergei Sergeyev of the University of Birmingham on periodicity of matrix powers in max algebra.
Luigi Rizzotto says sockets and the network stack were built for a different hardware era, then shows FreeBSD send-path timings like 104 nanoseconds to enter the kernel and 220 nanoseconds in the driver.
Carlo Lancia presents a point-process model for aircraft arrivals that also applies to transportation systems, network data packets, outpatient scheduling, and commercial-dock crane handling.
Hamilton Institute Seminars on machine-to-machine communication opens with the claim that machines are best at boring metering jobs and critical decisions that need milliseconds, not poetry or music.
Richard Winter’s Hamilton Institute seminar on state-constrained optimal control argues that distance estimates are the unifying tool behind dynamic programming, the Pontryagin maximum principle, and numerical methods.
Pauline Van Bruisha presents cholera models that combine human transmission with infection through contaminated water.
Albert Banks presents ADOS, a distributed opportunistic scheduling method developed with PhD student Andrés García Saavedra and colleagues.
A 24-hour Cologne simulation with 700,000 trips shows 1,500 to 2,000 disconnected vehicle components most of the time.
Francesco Gringoli presents his work on reverse engineering Broadcom wireless card firmware to improve IEEE 802.11 protocol performance.
A research seminar on wireless network resource allocation and control systems from a mathematical optimization perspective.
A seminar on large deviation theory and its applications in statistical physics, presented by Hugo Touchet.
Dr.