The conference MEGA 2013 will take place at Goethe University in Frankfurt,Germany during June 3-7, 2013. MEGA is the acronym for Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry (and its equivalent in Italian, French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.). This series of biennial international conferences, with the tradition dating back to 1990, is devoted to computational and application aspects of Algebraic Geometry and related topics. Classical subareas include computational commutative algebra (Gröbner and standard bases theory), methods for solving systems of polynomial equations, toric geometry, and the development of computer algebra systems as well as of numerical polynomial system solvers. MEGA 2013 will also present state-of-the art coverage of new effective paradigms, as well as of applications of algebraic geometry, including real algebraic geometry and optimization, tensor decompositions, the interplay between algebraic geometry and randomness, algebraic number theory, toric and tropical geometry and its interaction with the theory of lattice polytopes, and applications to algebraic statistics. The proposed workshop has the goal to familiarize researchers within the community and beyond with the most recent developments, to intensify existing and initiate new collaborations, and to sustain and broaden the existing mentoring network within the field.
The conference will have 9 invited talks, around 30 contributed talks, a poster session and a software presentation. The list of plenary speakers, selected by the organizers, includes senior as well as young promising researchers and two leading female mathematicians working in the field. The contributed talks and poster presenters will be selected by a highly competitive refereed selection process among all the submissions to the conference. Around 200 participants are expected to attend, including around 50 from under-represented groups. Participants from U.S. institutions will have valuable opportunities to present their work to an international audience of peers. This will enable them to discuss their own work and start collaborations that may have significant future impact on their careers and on algebraic geometry. To disseminate the results of the workshop to a wider audience, abstracts, slides, and notes from the presentations and discussions will be placed on the conference's website. Finally, following the tradition of MEGA, conference proceedings will be published as a special issue of a prestigious journal.
Further information can be found on the conference website www.math.uni-frankfurt.de/mega2013/
(and its equivalent in Italian, French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.). This series of biennial international conferences, with the tradition dating back to 1990, is devoted to computational and application aspects of Algebraic Geometry and related topics. The goal of this NSF conference grant was to support young members of US institutions to attend MEGA and present their work to an international audience of peeks. As planned in the project proposal, the grant funded registration fees, travel and lodging of nine graduate students and eight postdocs, and covered lodging expenses of three young invited speakers from US institutions. Remaining funds were used to partially cover the registration fee and lodging expenses of one young researchers at the tenure-track level which is currently not supported by other federal funds. This edition of MEGA presented the state-of-the art coverage of new effective paradigms, as well as of applications of algebraic geometry, including real algebraic geometry and optimization, tensor decompositions, the interplay between algebraic geometry and randomness, algebraic number theory, toric and tropical geometry and their interaction with the theory of lattice polytopes, and applications to algebraic statistics. The main objective of this biennal conference series is to gather the community and beyond to discuss the most recent developments in the field, to intensify existingand initiate new collaborations, and to sustain and broaden the existing mentoring network within the field. These goals were achieved during this edition. In particular, to emphasize the novelty of the results presented at the conference, the scientific board of this edition of MEGA did not accept submissions that had already been published elsewhere. Future steps in the field of computational algebraic geometry where discussed at an open panel. The conference had 9 plenary lectures, 37 contributed talks in two parallel sessions, a poster session with 13 expositions and a software presentation with 6 contributions. The list of plenary speakers, selected by the organizers, included senior as well as young promising researchers and two leading female mathematicians working in the field. The contributed talks and poster presenters were selected among 61 submissions by a highly competitive refereed selection process. The organizing committee included a senior female researcher and a female postdoc (associated personel of this grant). The conference had around 180 participants, including around 50 from under-represented groups. This edition of MEGA included many young participants, 10% of which came from the US and were funded by this grant. Seven of them presented their work at the conference. As a result, several of them started new collaborations that may have significant future impact on their careers and on effective algebraic geometry. To disseminate the results of the workshop to a wider audience, abstracts, slides, and notes from the presentations and discussions have been placed on the conference’s website. Finally, following the tradition of MEGA, conference proceedings will be published as a special issue of the Journal of Symbolic Computation. The editors of this issue are Alicia Dickenstein, Jan Draisma and Bernard Mourrain. The deadline for submissions was September 30th 2013, and about 30 articles were contributed.
