The Hawaii Conference on Algebraic Number Theory, Arithmetic Geometry, and Modular Forms (HCANTAGMF) will be held on March 6-8, 2012 at the East-West Center in Honolulu, adjacent to the University of Hawaii campus. As it is occurring on the heels of the AMS Western Section meeting (Honolulu) and just before a memorial conference for Alf van der Poorten (Newcastle, Australia), a critical mass of prominent number theorists will be in attendance. Talks will occur in three parallel sessions on the topics in the conference title, with breaks for plenary lectures by five distinguished speakers. There will also be opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to present their results. Further details and a list of participants can be found at the conference URL www.math.hawaii.edu/numbertheory2012/
The HCANTAGMF will be a major vehicle for discussing the latest advances in our subject and laying the ground work for future ones. It will be an unparalleled opportunity for the graduate students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, for the faculty at the nearby community colleges in the UH system, and for the faculty and students of the universities on the West Coast with smaller number theory programs. Approximately 100 number theorists will be in attendance, representing a diverse collection of sub-disciplines, and ample time will be allotted for conversation with and among them. The organizers also hope to improve the visibility of the number theory group at the University of Hawaii. By introducing so many researchers to our local number theory group, the organizers hope to increase the visibility of our activities and the profile of the graduate program at the University of Hawaii.
. The conference had 93 registered participants, including 12 female participants and 9 graduate students. Participants hailed from the United States, Canada, Egypt, Qatar, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Mexico, Ireland, and Lebanon. In addition to the registered participants, many of the faculty and graduate students from the University of Hawaii at Manoa attended one or more of the plenary talks. The five plenary speakers were: Michael Bennett from the University of British Columbia ("The generalized Fermat equation : a progress report"); Michel Lapudis from the University of California at Riverside ("Fractal Strings, Complex Dimensions and the Spectral Operator: From the Riemann Hypothesis to Phase Transitions and Universality"); Dino Lorenzini from the University of Georgia ("The Index of an Algebraic Variety"); Ken Ono from Emory University ("The legacy of Ramanujan's mock theta functions: Harmonic Maass forms in number theory"); and Alice Silverberg from the University of California at Irvine ("Deterministic elliptic curve primality proving for special sequences"). In addition to the five plenary talks, the conference included four concurrent special sessions tied to the themes of the talks. During these special sessions, leaders in their respective fields gave short talks about recent and ongoing research. The special session themes were: Algebraic Number Theory, Arithmetic Geometry, Modular Forms, and Number Theory & Fractal Geometry. Time was reserved during each day for informal conversation and collaboration, allowing researchers to continue to pursue ideas generated by the research talks. By all accounts, the conference was a resounding success.
