This award supports the 28th Annual Automorphic Forms Workshop (AFW), to be held May 12-16, 2014 in Moab, Utah. Funds will be used to cover travel costs of conference attendees. The organizers are David Cardon, Darrin Doud, and Paul Jenkins of Brigham Young University. Additional information can be found on the workshop website at automorphicformsworkshop.org.
Automorphic forms have played a central role in contemporary number theory, with deep connections to many areas across mathematics and the mathematical sciences including representation theory, combinatorics, mathematical physics, Lie theory, and geometry. Some of the most impressive breakthroughs in recent decades, such as Borcherds' proof of the Moonshine Conjecture, the resolution of Fermat's Last Theorem by Wiles, and the proof of the Fundamental Lemma by Chau, are automorphic in nature. So are many other celebrated conjectures, such as those of Langlands and Bloch-Kato, which remain open, and those of Serre and Sato-Tate, whose proofs have recently been published or announced. Important new families of automorphic forms are still being discovered, such as the harmonic Maass forms and mock modular forms which lie behind Ramanujan's mock theta functions. This conference includes talks from throughout this important area of mathematics.
The AFW serves an important role in the community through its tradition of welcoming and mentoring junior researchers in the area. Many senior researchers have attended the workshop at some point in their career, and many mathematicians (including two of the PIs) gave one of their first conference talks as graduate students at an AFW. The workshop has led to many research collaborations and research papers, and the conference traditionally includes panel discussions on topics designed to further the mathematical careers of junior participants. Additionally, the AFW has always had a welcoming reputation towards women and members of other underrepresented groups; historically, a substantial percentage of participants have been women. The AFW attracts participants from around the world, from different career stages, and from different types of universities.
This grant supported the 28th annual Workshop on Automorphic Forms and Related Topics (AFW), held from May 12 to May 16, 2014, in Moab, Utah. In recent years, automorphic forms have played a central role in contemporary number theory, with deep connections to many areas across mathematics and the mathematical sciences including representation theory, combinatorics, mathematical physics, Lie theory, and geometry. The AFW attracts participants from around the world, from different career stages, and from different types of universities, and the AFW serves an important role in the community through its tradition of welcoming and mentoring junior researchers and graduate and undergraduate students. The 2014 AFW featured 62 participants and 39 research talks over five days. In addition, the 2014 AFW included two panel discussions on topics relevant to career development in academia. The grant was used to support the travel costs of 23 attendees at the conference. It was used to support junior researchers (graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty) whose participation would not have been possible otherwise. The 2014 AFW was was the first AFW to be held in the United States in several years, which allowed greater participation by US-based junior researchers and students in automorphic forms.
