Southwest Local Algebra Meeting 2015

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports participation in the Southwest Local Algebra Meeting 2015, held at Oklahoma State University on February 28 - March 1, 2015. This conference will facilitate interactions between students and faculty with interests in ring theory, broadly interpreted, from institutions in the Southwest. Algebraists in the Southwest region pursue research on a variety of topics under the umbrella of pure and applied ring theory. The geographical distances in the region are such that interactions between people at different institutions rarely happen spontaneously. The meeting will bring together students and faculty from a variety of institutions for inspiring talks, with ample time for scientific interaction, providing opportunities for participants to begin new collaborations and catalyzing new research projects. About 50 participants are expected, including students and young and senior faculty from throughout the Southwest and South. The participation of students from underrepresented minority groups, women, untenured faculty, and faculty at non-Ph.D. granting institutions is particularly encouraged. Six experts will deliver hour-long talks on topics within their areas of specialty; the lectures will be accessible to graduate students. The meeting will also feature three hour-long poster sessions in which the participating students will present their research. More information can be found at the conference webpage: http://www.math.ttu.edu/~lchriste/slam2015.html. The study of rings, in the broadest sense, is crucial to many branches of mathematics, including commutative and non-commutative geometry, group representations, number theory, coding theory, and cryptography. Participants will discuss several key problems in commutative algebra, including progress on finding bounds for Betti numbers, a topic that has significant implications for classical problems in combinatorics and algebraic geometry, including Cayley-Bacharach theory. Several speakers work in combinatorial or computational algebraic geometry and will also shed light on connections between these fields and commutative algebra. Finally, the research expertise of one speaker is in Lie theory, providing an opportunity to introduce ring theorists to problems in a different field close to their area of work.