March 14 is internationally celebrated as a Pi Day, the mathematical constant π, since 3, 1 and 4 are the first three significant digits of π.

In relation to Pi Day, the week of March 11-17 is marked as “La semaine des mathématiques” by the Ministry of National Education in France. The purpose is to promote mathematics among young people around the world.

This year UFAZ also joins this celebration and will organize a series of events dedicated to math during the week of March 11-15.

We invite everyone to enjoy the math week with us.

Stay tuned!

Event Program:

On Monday 11 of March: Conference 1 (16h15-16h45).

Speaker: Dr. Loïc Cellier. Title: The game of Hex - historical aspects, variants of the rules, and first properties.

Abstract: The game of Hex is a combinatorial game, which was discovered in 1942 by Piet Hein, Danish scientist, and poet, and presented again in 1948 by John F. Nash, a North-American mathematician. It is a connection game on a hexagonal tiling. We present historical aspects of this game, with graph theory and computational complexity. We propose some variants of the rules; and, we discuss first properties, for instance, who owns the winning strategy for some configurations.

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On Tuesday 12 of March: Conference 2 (16h15-16h45).

Speaker: Dr. Rabih Amhaz.

Title: Applied mathematics for image processing.

Abstract: Since the beginning of civilization the humans felt safe and start to discover and explain more nature around them so they became the scientist. That is how he starts to do models for the world, the earth and space. Here start the studies of geometry one of the most important branches of mathematics the earth measurement 6000 years ago. This geometry also was behind today's writing of the Arabic numerals that we use. But did you ask yourself why we have 12 months? 24 hours per day and an hour equal 60 minutes? Why circle is 360 degree? What was life without Pi? Or what is the first Pi? Geometry still one of the keys to do computer science generally and image processing especially. We will discover how to detect lines and circle in images using pure mathematics and geometry transforms.

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On Friday 15 of March: Conference 3 (16h15-16h45).

Speaker: Dr. Younès Monjid.

Title: Fourier Correlation Imaging concept for passive Earth remote sensing.

Abstract: A new concept based on Aperture Synthesis, which is a technique used for Earth remote sensing in the case of large thermal sources, coupled with a passive spatiotemporal interferometry technique has been proposed in order to enhance the achieved geometric resolution by actual spaceborne brightness temperature sensors. We show that when using the aforementioned spatiotemporal interferometric system combined with a revolutionary Fourier correlation imaging procedure, consisting in cross-correlating at different frequencies the Fourier components of the fluctuations of the electric field received by a pair of antennas separated by a distance dr on-board of a satellite flying at height h, the 2D position-dependent brightness temperature can be reconstructed. Besides, the analytical derivation of the correlation function gives rise to a relationship linking the measured correlations to the position-dependent brightness temperatures by means of a Highly Oscillatory Integral (HOI) kernel. Interestingly, the analytical study of the HOI kernel using highly oscillatory numerical methods showed the existence of a 2D information for the measurement of the position-dependent brightness temperature. Based on this, one is capable of reconstructing 2D brightness temperatures starting from a simple 1D geometry