Jeremy Sumner School of Mathematics & Physics, University of Tasmania Representation Theory, Classical Invariants and Phylogenetics Wednesday 3rd August 14:05-14:55pm, Carslaw Building Room 373. In this talk we will examine the relevance of representation theory in the analysis of the algebraic structure of the standard Markov models of phylogenetics. In particular it will be shown that the study of "phylogenetic invariants" can be subsumed into the general study of classical invariant theory upon a tensor product space with a stochastic group action. The standard phylogenetic invariants known in the literature are found to be a special case of one-dimensional representations of the associated group action. Other types of classical invariants will be presented and shown to be useful in constructing multiple taxon distance measures. The crucial motivation for this study is the remarkable mathematical and conceptual analogy between phylogenetics and the process of scattering in particle physics.