Simons Foundation

In the disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP), disease genes directly cause the dysfunction and death of rod photoreceptors, the photoreceptor type that mediates vision in dim light, causing night blindness. Subsequently, the cone photoreceptors, which mediate color and daylight vision, also lose function and die. Dr. Cepko et al have suggested a model wherein cones are affected due to the dysregulated metabolism that follows rod death. They have begun to develop gene therapy to combat this, using adenovirus-associated vectors (AAV) to deliver genes that help cones fight oxidation and other forms of stress. Their progress in treating RP mice using such vectors will be presented.

Simulating quantum mechanics on classical computers appears at first to require exponential computational resources, yet at the same time rapid progress is being made in accurate simulations of the quantum properties of realistic materials. How is this discrepancy resolved?

Topology, the "rubber sheet geometry", studies properties that do not change when objects are pulled and stretched. Accepting somewhat fuzzy input, it is the part of mathematics typically applied when qualitative conclusions are reached. However, it has a quantitative aspect important in understanding singularities, and potentially, high-dimensional noisy data and aspects of large-scale geometry of networks. Prof. Weinberger will discuss a variety of phenomena that arise or are illuminated by tracking of the complexity of geometric constructions.