Conference on Advances in Geometric Representation Theory

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

The conference "Advances in geometric representation theory" will be held May 8-13, 2016 at the University of Michigan. Geometric representation theory is the study of symmetry via geometric spaces. It is an expanding branch of mathematics with wide-reaching applications and connections to other fields. The timing of the conference has been chosen in anticipation of the first results emerging from the 2014 program in geometric representation theory at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, as well as intensive semester programs in Canada and Sweden. The conference will provide a venue to disseminate major new results in this rapidly developing field of mathematics and make the corresponding new methods and points of view available to a broad range of researchers. In particular, the organizers will make specific efforts to include graduate students and post-docs, as well as members of underrepresented groups. Classically, problems of classification of representations have been attacked with a wide variety of algebraic, analytic, and combinatorial methods. Since the more recent discovery of equivalences with geometric objects such as D-modules, the door has been opened to the application of powerful tools from geometry, such as Hodge theory and the decomposition theorem. The conference will focus on these recent developments. New categorical techniques and relationships to physics and algebraic geometry will draw the participation of researchers from those fields, which will contribute to further interdisciplinary interactions. The conference website is http://www-personal.umich.edu/~snkitche/Conference/.