This award funds three Showme Algebraic Geometry meetings at Washington University, University of Missouri - St Louis (UMSL), and University of Missouri - Columbia (MU) for the Spring semesters of 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively. Each school will take a turn organizing a meeting in the following order: Washington University, UMSL and MU. Each meeting will have a focus area within algebraic geometry. The focus areas are: modern trends in algebraic geometry with special emphasis on birational geometry (Washington University), the geometry and arithmetic of K3 surfaces and Calabi-Yau manifolds (UMSL), and orbifold cohomology, Donaldson-Thomas theory and related moduli spaces (MU). For each of these three meetings, we will have 3 or 4 invited addresses by algebraic geometers from Missouri and nearby states, and two invited talks by leading mathematicians from outside the geographic region.
The meetings have two main goals. The first is to provide a forum for algebraic geometers in Missouri and nearby states to meet with colleagues and learn of recent research developments in the focused areas. The second is to give graduate students, recent Ph.D's, women, minorities and persons with disabilities an opportunity to broaden their mathematical horizons. The focused areaes of these Showme Algebraic Geometry meetings are all areas of algebraic geometry for which connections with different areas of mathematics and physics are apparent and emerging. The meetings would have a high impact on diversity, as well as scientific and educational activities.