The Ahlfors-Bers Colloquium commemorates the mathematical legacy of Lars Ahlfors and Lipman Bers. The core of this legacy lies in the fields of geometric function theory, Teichmuller theory, hyperbolic manifolds, and partial differential equations. However, their work has impacted and created interactions with many other fields, such as algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, dynamics, geometric group theory, number theory and topology. The last several years have been a period of intense activity and progress in the field. Recent progress includes the solutions of Thurston's Ending Lamination Conjecture, the Bers-Sullivan-Thurston Density Conjecture, and Marden's Tameness Conjecture, the determination of the spherical Bloch constant, a proof of the conformal invariance of percolation, a proof of the quasi-isometric rigidity of mapping class groups and the discovery of the relationship between Weil-Petersson Geometry and the Witten-Kontsevich conjecture
The Colloquium will serve as a venue for the dissemination of these results and the consideration of future directions in the field. Twelve plenary lectures will be given by leaders in the field. Smaller workshops will provide an excellent opportunity for young mathematicians to disseminate their work and to interact with other young mathematicians, as well as the established researchers in the field.
