This award will provide support for participants, especially women, graduate students, postdocs, and young faculty, in the "Ergodic Theory Workshop" that will be held on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus from April 29 to May 2, 2010.
This conference focuses on five major topics in ergodic theory: multiple recurrence, pointwise convergence of nonconventional ergodic averages, pointwise convergence of ergodic averages along subsequences of integers, cocycles and functional equations, and return-time phenomena. All of these are central and extremely active areas of current ergodic theory research. The format of the workshop is such that young people will have ample opportunities to speak and otherwise be engaged in the various conference activities.
was held on April 29, 2010-May 02-2010 at the Department of Mathematics at UNC- CH. The workshop received the financial support of The National Science Foundation and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An important component of the intellectual merit of this workshop lied in the following two aspects 1) Major Talks and lectures were given on the recent breakthroughs on the pointwise or norm convergence of nonconventional ergodic averages and on the convergence of ergodic averages along subsequences of integers. Discussions between mathematicians from interconnected research areas (Harmonic Analysis, Ergodic Theory, Probability Theory and Number Theory) helped further the recent progress made on these questions. 2) The organization was similar to the one used in previous workshops. We brought together young (graduate students, Post Doc, Assistant Professors) and senior researchers during the four days of the workshop. The workshop started on April 29 with a Departmental Colloquium talk given by Y. Katznelson. Senior researchers such as Jean Pierre Conze and Zoltan Buczolich gave semi expository talks to allow junior researchers to get a good introduction to some active research areas. Young researchers like Patrick Lavictoire and Richard Oberlin gave important talks. The main bulk of the expenses covered with NSF funding went to Young researchers. A session on open problems gathered several questions and generated important discussions. Several of these problems and the results presented during the talks will appear in the volume proceedings of the 2010-2011 workshops. (The participants can be seen on the image attached) The workshop had a broader impact. Particular attention was given to mathematicians from underrepresented groups. Young researchers from KNUST (Ghana) and IMSP (BENIN) who had no means to travel to such events attended the workshop. (Emma Owusu Kwaakwah - GHANA - Romeo Awi- BENIN). Two senior researchers from IMSP with very little travel support attended also this workshop (Joel Tossa- current Director of the IMSP and Aboubacar Marcos). The discussions and the contacts made have impacted the research directions back in BENIN (possible creation of a center in Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems) and in GHANA (new tenured guidelines with a main focus on research). Several of the problems raised during the problem session and the results presented during the talks should appear in the volume proceedings of the 2010-2011 workshops. This will help disseminate further the work done during then workshop
