The Fall 2012 MIdwestern GrapH TheorY LIII (MIGHTY LIII) conference will be hosted at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa on September 21-22, 2012. MIGHTY is a long-running conference series which draws graph theorists from across the country to one- or two-day conferences to disseminate new ideas in a wide variety of topics related to graph theory. Topics typically represented include chromatic graph theory, directed graphs, hypergraphs, and applications of graph theory (i.e., to biological and social networks).
This conference provides a rare opportunity to bring together a large number of researchers in graph theory from the Midwest. The broad appeal of the plenary speakers, Ron Graham and Persi Diaconis, will attract many participants including students and junior investigators. Most of the funds from this award will support the travel costs of such participants. More information about the conference is available at the conference website: www.math.iastate.edu/mighty2012/.
The MIGHTY LIII (Midwestern GrapH TheorY) conference was held on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa on September 21-22, 2012. The conference was organized by Steve Butler, Ryan Martin and Michael Young, all from Iowa State University. The conference was well attended with 155 participants, drawn largely from schools in the midwest region but also attracting researchers nationwide. Information about the conference including a program with abstracts and a full list of participants is maintained online at: www.math.iastate.edu/mighty2012/ SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM The first talk of the conference was given on Friday, September 21 by Ron Graham of the University of California, San Diego who delivered a lecture entitled "Computers and Mathematics: Problems and Prospects". The talk was advertised and open to the public and delivered in an auditorium which seats over 200 and there was standing room only by the time the talk began. The second talk of the conference was given on Saturday, September 22 by Persi Diaconis of Stanford University who delivered a lecture entitled "Graph coloring and the birthday problem". The talk was again well attended with over 150 people in attendance. During the remainder of the day on Saturday there were 66 other contributed talks given in six parallel sessions running until 6:00pm. These talks were in all areas of graph theory, ranging from hypergraphs, degree sequences, posets, games on graphs, algebra on graphs, coloring, algorithms, crossing numbers, and so on. The presenters represented a diverse range from an undergraduate student, graduate students, postdocs, young researchers, and established researchers. Some of the more prominent speakers include Joan Hutchinson (Macalester College), Stephen Hartke (University of Nebraska--Lincoln), Felix Lazebnik (University of Delaware), Andrew Beveridge (Macalester College), Linyuan Lu (University of South Carolina), and Anant Godbole (East Tennessee State University). SOCIAL PROGRAM Part of the original purpose of the meeting was to encourage discussion and networking among the participants. To help achieve this goal there were a series of informal times put into the program. These included a reception after the talk by Ron Graham on Friday and two large coffee breaks on Saturday. The main social event was a banquet that was held on Friday evening at the Gateway Hotel and Conference Center. This banquet was attended by 95 of the participants (the bulk of the participants who were able to arrive in time for the banquet). The banquet lasted several hours and gave the participants ample opportunity to talk and mingle with other participants. PARTICIPATION The conference registration was open to all and the conference was promoted by direct contact to many graph theory researchers in the midwest region and Iowa, on mailing lists, on conference lists, and during several conferences leading up to MIGHTY LIII. This led to a sizable conference in terms of participation resulting in a conference that was more than twice as large as any previous MIGHTY conference in the series. There were 155 participants who registered from the conference, and several local individuals who did not register but still attended. Of these 42 were from Iowa State University including a large number of graduate students and professors from departments outside of mathematics. Information about nationality of participants was not collected, however all but two of the participants were associated with either a college or university in the United States or directly with the U.S. government. There were undergraduate participants from Iowa State University, Drake University, St. Olaf College (who brought 9 students), and several other schools. We worked with several programs with strengths in graph theory to bring in their graduate students to participate, these schools included University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Wyoming, University of Nebraska--Lincoln, and University of Colorado--Denver. In addition we were able to attract graduate students, postdocs and young researchers from a variety of institutions to participate. REACTION The reaction of participants was overwhelmingly positive. The conference ran smoothly (thanks largely to the excellent support staff available from the Department of Mathematics at Iowa State University). Typical comments included phrases such as ``fantastic'' and ``wonderful''. The success of the conference has led to an increased interest in starting a new conference series for combinatorics and graph theory for the great plains region. INTELLECTUAL MERIT AND BROADER IMPACT The conference worked well in bringing together a large number of graph theorists into one location. Many of the talks gave the latest results in the field and researchers were able to share information and further the collective knowledge in graph theory. The push to incorporate as many students as possible (almost the bulk of the participation were students) will lead to a broader impact of encouraging more research in graph theory. The success of this conference will also lead to future conferences with similar content and geographic location.
