Southeastern Lie Theory Workshop Series

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Southeastern Lie Theory Workshops funded under this grant will take place at College of Charleston on October 13-15, 2012 and at Louisiana State University in late spring of 2013. Algebraic, analytic and geometric Lie theory is a major area of mathematical research with important application to many different areas of mathematics, physics, computer science, etc. There is a critical mass of mathematicians working on different aspects of Lie Theory and their applications in the southeastern region of U.S. Three years ago some of the PIs established a consortium called "Southeastern Lie Theory Network" to enhance regional research collaboration and provide a stronger educational environment for graduate students and junior researchers. Toward this end, they initiated an annual workshop series. The first three workshops were held at member institutions: North Carolina State University (NCSU) (2009), University of Georgia (UGA) (2010) and University of Virginia (UVA) (2011) with a follow up workshop to be held at North Carolina State University during April 21-22, 2012. Based on the success of these workshops the PIs plan to continue this series with a workshop at College of Charleston (CoC) in 2012 and one at Louisiana State University (LSU) in 2013. The research themes for these two workshops will be: "Vertex Algebras, Conformal Field Theory, and Integrable Systems" (2012, CoC) and "Noncommutative geometry and representation theory" (2013, LSU). This funding will provide the needed support to organize these two workshops. Each workshop will feature one or two main speakers, giving 2-3 expository talks in the theme area, accessible to graduate students and postdocs. In addition, there will be 3-4 invited talks by other researchers. There will be ample time for informal discussion among participants. Considerable time will be devoted for informal discussion among participants in small groups (following the "AIM Model") to work on specific research problems led by invited team leaders chosen from among the participants. The consortium and workshop series has and will continue to stimulate and enhance research collaboration in Lie theory in the southeastern region of the U.S. In the long run, the proposed activity will foster a strong regional tradition of research and education, in turn helping mathematics departments attract more minorities and underrepresented groups to mathematical sciences in general. The website for this conference is: http://coxbl.people.cofc.edu/Southeastern%20Lie%20Theory%20conference