Representations of Riemannian Geometry Conference

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides support for participation in the Representations of Riemannian Geometry Conference, to be held August 10-13, 2017 at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA. The conference focuses on modern developments in global Riemannian geometry and the relationship between global metric geometry and topology. In the recent past these fields were very important in several breakthroughs in mathematics. For example, methods from both geometric analysis and metric geometry were crucial for the proof of the famous Poincaré conjecture, which goes back to the year 1900 and is the only one of the Millennium Prize problems to be solved to date. These areas of mathematics also have many applications, for example to physics, chemistry, engineering, and big data analysis. This funding will help to involve early-career mathematicians, including graduate students and postdocs. Special attention will be devoted to identifying and supporting women and other members of underrepresented groups. There will be speaking opportunities for junior researchers and graduate students, as well as a full day of introductory talks with the goal of attracting a broader audience. The conference will include speakers and participants who work in several research areas, thus further encouraging cross-collaborations. The conference will feature eleven plenary speakers with plenty of time between talks to encourage discussion and the interchange of ideas. Additionally, there will be three talks given by graduate students. The technical areas represented by the conference include several areas of global Riemannian geometry: symmetries of spaces with lower curvature bounds, special Riemannian metrics (especially Einstein metrics, Kähler metrics, and warped products), families of harmonic self-maps of spheres, foliations of spheres, projective and conformal geometry, homogeneous Ricci flow and isometric flow on orbit spaces, isoparametric hypersurfaces, path spaces, and closed geodesics. The overlap between these areas makes very real the possibility for cross-collaboration among the participants, and the conference activities will bring together leading experts and young researchers and students, facilitating the dissemination of recent research progress and discussion of future directions and open problems. The conference webpage is available at: http://palmer.wellesley.edu/~geom-conf/