Geometries, surfaces and representations of fundamental groups

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This NSF award provides partial support for a conference entitled "Geometries, surfaces and representations of fundamental groups," which will take place at the University of Maryland, College Park, on June 22-24, 2016. This meeting will bring together experts at the frontier of current work in this area from the United States and internationally, with a view towards open problems and future directions. The list of distinguished speakers will attract broad participation of students and postdoctoral researchers. Beginning mathematicians will be especially encouraged to attend. It is expected that the conference will itself generate research projects and provide a fertile ground for collaboration and the exchange of ideas. A major goal of this conference is to support, train and encourage the next generation of mathematicians in the fields of geometric structures and representations. The conference organizers are committed to ensuring a diverse and broad spectrum of participation. This conference will focus on recent developments in the rapidly developing field of geometric structures and representation varieties. The areas of focus for this meeting include Anosov structures, Higgs bundles and higher Teichmueller spaces, dynamics on moduli spaces, and pseudo-Riemannian structures. The list of fifteen internationally renowned principal speakers for this conference reflects the breadth of these topics and indicates the diversity of techniques in this subject. Additional 50-75 conference participants will include graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty members. By bringing together all these speakers in one conference, the links between different approaches and techniques in this rich subject will be further strengthened. Videos and notes of the talks will be available on the conference website. The speakers will also be invited to submit papers to a volume of conference proceedings. The conference website is at: www-math.umd.edu/geometries/.