Paolo Cavicchioli: Exploring Persistent Homology: from foundations to protein applications

Persistent homology is a powerful tool in topological data analysis, offer- ing insights into the shape of data across multiple scales. In this talk, we will start with a theoretical introduction to persistent homology, covering the essential concepts and computational methods, aimed at an audience with a background in graduate-level mathematics. We will then shift focus to an exciting real-world application: the use of persistent homology to study lasso proteins, a newly studied class of proteins. Unlike classical methods based on minimal surfaces, our approach leverages topological features to recognize and classify the distinctive shapes of these proteins, opening new pathways for research in computational biology.