SPECIAL TIME: 2:30 -- 3:30 pm, Monday, Feb 23, 2009 PLACE: Theory Lab, CSE 306. SPEAKER: Mark Braverman, Microsoft New England TITLE: Poly-logarithmic Independence Fools AC0 Circuits ABSTRACT: We will describe the recent proof of the 1990 Linial-Nisan conjecture. The conjecture states that bounded-depth boolean circuits cannot distinguish poly-logarithmically independent distributions from the uniform one. The talk will be almost completely self-contained.