The Poisson 2014 Conference on Poisson Geometry in Mathematics and Physics will be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 4-8, 2014. The conference will be proceed by a Summer School aimed at young researchers (graduate students and post-docs), from July 28 to August 1, 2014. The Poisson 2014 is the ninth in a series of biennial meeting, bringing together mathematicians and mathematical physicists with common interests in Poisson geometry and its applications. Speakers at Poisson 2014 have been chosen not only for the importance of their results but also for their ability to communicate them to a broad audience of mathematicians and physicists. There is a strong representation of women and minorities among the speakers. The conference will be preceded by a one week school which has a strong training component, including both introductory and advanced level courses. Participation of young researchers and those from underrepresented groups is actively encouraged. Conference proceedings will be published in a manner which makes them accessible at low (or no) cost to a wide readership, in order to stimulate further study and research in the rapidly growing area of Poisson geometry.
Poisson Geometry lies at the intersection of Mathematical Physics and Geometry. It originates in the mathematical formulation of classical mechanics as the semiclassical limit of quantum mechanics. Poisson structures can be traced back to the 19th century classics by Poisson, Hamilton, Jacobi and Lie. Poisson Geometry as an independent field started around 1980 with the foundational works of Lichnerowicz and Weinstein. The field developed rapidly, stimulated by the connections with a large number of areas in mathematics and mathematical physics, including differential geometry and Lie theory, quantization, noncommutative geometry, representation theory and quantum groups, geometric mechanics and integrable systems. A number of major developments took place in the last 15 years; some of the highlights are Kontsevich's formality theorem, the study of Poisson sigma models and the relationship to the "integrability problem" for Lie algebroids, the relation with the moduli space of flat connections and various moment map theories, singular reduction, (generalized) complex geometry, cluster algebras, etc.
Detailed information about Poisson 2014 may be found at
