We shall organize a Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences conference on `Expansion Methods in Combinatorics' to take place in Memphis in May 2003. The principal lecturer will be Christian Borgs of Microsoft Research and the conference will be aimed at young researchers as well as established researchers in combinatorics, computer science and other areas related to statistical physics and probability theory.
Although several methods from statistical physics have already found applications in combinatorics and theoretical computer science, one of the classical methods of statistical mechanics, cluster expansion, has hardly been employed in these fields. There is every reason to believe that in the right hands these expansion techniques will find important and far-reaching applications in combinatorics and theoretical computer science. For this reason, the conference will address these important techniques with the twin aims of raising awareness of them and working towards their simplification.
