the genealogy process is typically the most time-consuming part of -- and a limiting factor in the success of -- forensic investigative genetic genealogy, which is a new approach to solving violent crimes and identifying human remains. we formulate a stochastic dynamic program that -- given the list of matches and their genetic distances to the unknown target -- chooses the best decision at each point in time: which match to investigate (i.e., find its ancestors), which ancestors of these matches to descend from (i.e., find its descendants), or whether to terminate the investigation. the objective is to maximize the probability of finding the target minus a cost on the expected size of the final family tree. we estimate the  parameters of our model using data from 17 cases (eight solved, nine unsolved) from the dna doe project. we assess the proposed strategy using simulated versions of the 17 dna doe project cases, and compare it to a benchmark strategy that ranks matches by their genetic distance to the target and only descends from known common ancestors between a pair of matches. the proposed strategy solves cases 25-fold faster than the benchmark strategy, and does so by aggressively descending from a set of potential most recent common ancestors between the target and a match even when this set has a low probability of containing the correct most recent common ancestor.

this lecture is jointly sponsored by the ucsd rady school of management and the ucsd mathematics department.

the mpr2 conference room is just off ridge walk. it is on the same level as ridge walk. you will see the glass-walled mpr2 conference room on your left as you come into the rady school area. 

free registration required: https://forms.gle/jv8nvfajv9mz6u3v6 

the plate bending or babuska paradox refers to the failure of convergence when a linear bending problem with simple support boundary conditions is approximated using polygonal domain approximations. we provide an explanation based on a variational viewpoint and identify sufficient conditions that avoid the paradox and which show that boundary conditions have to be suitably modified. we show that the paradox also matters in nonlinear thin-sheet folding problems and devise approximations that correctly converge to the original problem. the results are relevant for the construction of curved folding devices.