Date: 6 April 2018 Location: Hempfield High School, Room 213 Speaker: Mona Merling, Johns Hopkins University Title: Group actions in algebraic K-theory Abstract. Algebraic K-groups are deep invariants of rings, which hide beautiful patterns and connections to problems in number theory. Lower K-groups have explicit algebraic descriptions, but higher algebraic K-groups require sophisticated topological and categorical machinery to define, and their introduction by Quillen was the culminating point of a long search for a definition that would meaningfully generalize the existing definitions of lower K-groups. In this talk, I will give a flavor of algebraic K-theory and its history, and I will describe current research aimed at telling the story in the case when the input has a group action.