Dave Smith (The University of Newcastle) will be giving a talk on Wednesday 5th March at 11am in Carslaw 173. Afterwards we will go to lunch with him (free lunch for students). Title: Linearized KdV on the line with a metric graph defect Abstract: We study the small amplitude linearization of the Korteweg de Vries equation on the line, but with a defect at x=0 represented by a network of finite intervals adjoined at that point, scattering waves. For a representative collection of examples, we obtain explicit contour integral representations of the solution and obtain existence and unicity results for piecewise smooth data. We also discuss extensions to more complex metric graph domains and introduce a serial version of the unified transform method which may be more efficient for such problems.