This award supports participation in the Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics (www.math.ncsu.edu/TLC). These are one-day (Saturday) conferences, held once a semester. Each conference brings four outstanding mathematicians from around the country to give talks about significant and exciting developments in combinatorics. The Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics workshops play numerous roles: they enhance the national infrastructure for research and education by creating and strengthening a regional network of interacting researchers; facilitate the dissemination of cutting-edge research ideas, methods and results among researchers in the Southeastern United States; promote the teaching and training of graduate students by exposing them to the perspectives of leading researchers; increase awareness and understanding of combinatorics, on the part of faculty and students in the Southeast; support the development of young faculty at various schools and help them build local support and research networks; broaden participation of underrepresented groups, particularly women; and foster research interactions among participants, leading to new research results.
Combinatorics is a growing and important area of mathematics. The focus of combinatorics is the structure of discrete (as opposed to continuous) sets of objects. Combinatorics is critical to many areas of mathematics, and plays a key role in computational, scientific, and engineering applications. The states of North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee have significant research strength in combinatorics and adjacent areas. In particular, there are remarkably many tenure-track researchers, senior researchers, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students in combinatorics and related fields at various colleges and universities within driving distance of the Research Triangle region of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill). A relatively large proportion of these researchers are from underrepresented groups. The lecture series provides valuable opportunities for interactions among these researchers.
