The Southwest Center for Arithmetic Geometry was founded in 1997 with support from an NSF Group Infrastructure Grant, and renewed in 2002 with a grant from the Infrastructure program. The main activity of the Southwest Center is the Arizona Winter School (AWS), an annual meeting which has become a prominent national event, and which provides high-level training and research experience for graduate students in arithmetic geometry. The AWS is an intensive five-day meeting, organized around a different central topic each year, which features a set of courses by leading and emerging experts. The AWS is not a traditional conference: the speakers organize courses of four lectures, with lecture notes provided in advance, and propose projects for graduate students to work on during the meeting. Each speaker hosts working sessions nightly during the meeting, and on the last day the students present their findings to the entire group. The result is a particularly intense and focused five days of mathematical activity for both students and speakers.

At the Winter School, connections among peers are forged, and mentoring relationships between students and senior researchers are developed. As has been the case at previous Winter Schools, subsequent collaborations between participants at all levels are the norm. In addition to continuing this successful program, the PIs (including three new PIs, all AWS alumni) will introduce new features to these annual activities. The PIs propose to add a post-doctoral training component to the Winter School, by assigning to each graduate student group a post-doctoral mentor to oversee their investigations. In addition to well-edited lecture notes and video recordings of lectures, the PIs will add new forms of content to the Center's web site, including discussion forums and periodic updates of topics from previous years. By sharing reusable content from the Winter Schools through the Southwest Center web site, the efforts of the Winter School participants will be available to all mathematicians indefinitely. Since our site will contain a thorough record of each Winter School, the dialogues begun at the Winter School will be extended to the greater mathematical community.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
0602287
Program Officer
Tomek Bartoszynski
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2006-07-01
Budget End
2009-06-30
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$416,493
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Arizona
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Tucson
State
AZ
Country
United States
Zip Code
85721