Conference: The Adjoint School: A Training Program for New Researchers in Applied Category Theory

Topos Institute, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports US-based participants in the Adjoint School Research Week, held at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK over July 11–15, 2022. The Adjoint School 2022 provides mentorship and community for early-career researchers in applied category theory, bringing them together for fortnightly virtual collaboration from February to June, and then in person for the Adjoint School Research Week, followed by the International Conference on Applied Category Theory. Held annually, the Adjoint School is a student-led, international, hands-on research training program serving 16-20 new students each year, with previous participants returning as teaching assistants and organizers. Adjoint School projects center on using techniques in category theory -- a mathematical language of systems and relationships -- to solve practical problems in science and engineering, relevant to both academic and industry needs. At core, the school is designed around community-building, reflecting the strongly social nature of mathematics research. As part of this, the school is especially committed to advancing inclusivity, access, and diversity in the applied category theory research community, and in the mathematics community more broadly. In 2022, the Adjoint School comprises the following projects and mentors: Compositional Thermodynamics (Spencer Breiner, National Institute of Standards and Technologies, USA), Fuzzy Type Theory for Opinion Dynamics (Paige North, University of Pennsylvania, USA), A Compositional Theory of Timed and Probabilistic Processes (Nicoletta Sabadini, University of Insubria, Italy), and Algebraic Structures in Logic and Relations (Filippo Bonchi, University of Pisa, Italy). The program combines a five-month virtual collaboration component with an intensive in-person week, and gives students practice across all skills of the research process, including reading and discussing papers, informal presentations and collaboration, expository blog writing, conference talks, writing papers, and, where relevant, programming. Further details can be found at http://adjointschool.com. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.