Bio: Elisa Bellah is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto. She earned her PhD from the University of Oregon in 2022 under the supervision of Shabnam Akhtari. Before joining the University of Toronto, she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on number theory, including Diophantine equations, recurrence sequences, and explicit algebraic number theory. She is especially interested in mathematics communication and in sharing an appreciation for mathematics with a broad audience.

Additional information can be found here.

Topics include:

Recurrence Sequences and Diophantine Problems
Diophantine analysis is an area of number theory concerned with finding integer solutions to polynomial equations defined over the rational numbers. As is often the case in number theory, many Diophantine problems are simple to state but notoriously difficult to solve. In this talk, we explore several Diophantine equations—including norm form equations and the Markoff equation—that connect to diverse areas of mathematics and have been studied using novel and surprising methods. In particular, we highlight the role of recurrence sequences in Diophantine analysis and demonstrate how familiar sequences, such as the Fibonacci sequence, can be leveraged to study these equations.