The CUNY Workshop on Differential Cohomologies, August 12-14, 2014

Cuny Queens College, Flushing NY

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides support for the "CUNY workshop on differential cohomologies" to be held at the CUNY Graduate Center, August 12-14 of 2014. The topics of this workshop are at the forefront of 21st-century mathematics, playing an increasingly important role in topology, geometry and the physicists' quantum field theories. This workshop will provide a fruitful exchange between leading researchers in several interrelated areas, will expose graduate students to research at the crossroads of these topics, and will facilitate interaction between these students and senior researchers. In this way, recent discoveries can effectively be shared and communicated, and new questions and directions for research will arise, thereby advancing knowledge in this area of mathematics the related sciences. The workshop organizers encourage the participation of students and researchers who are members of groups that are underrepresented in mathematics. The scope of this workshop will consist of differential cohomology theories, including ordinary cohomology and differential K-theory, abelian gerbes, algebraic K-theory, free loop spaces, and connections with topological field theories. The organizers plan to host approximately forty participants, including twenty or so local attendees, and the remaining twenty receiving travel and accommodations support by this grant. The workshop goals are to bring together researchers in these areas, from graduate students to senior researchers, to present fundamental material as well as to exchange ideas on recent progress and to lay out new directions for research. A website for the workshop can be found at http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~swilson/cunyworkshop14.html.