This award supports three annual "Georgia Topology Conference" meetings to be held at The University of Georgia in Athens, GA on May 21-25, 2014, and subsequently in May 2015 and May 2016. Topology can be viewed as the study of the structure and shape of the space we live in, particularly of the properties of the space that are not changed as the space is continuously deformed. There are deep relationships between topology, geometry, and physics, as well as applications to topics such as fluid dynamics, robotics, and image analysis. It is this diversity of approaches to central problems that has always energized research in topology.
The Georgia Topology Conference is an annual event that has been organized by topologists at the University of Georgia over the past half-century. An important aspect of this conference is that the organizers have consistently stressed the participation of new and recent doctoral recipients as speakers and encouraged participation by graduate students. With a format featuring the participation of several senior mathematicians and a larger group of junior researchers, this conference series plays a significant role in both disseminating the newest research and preparing graduate students and postdocs for a successful career in mathematics. The conference encourages and supports participation by members of under-represented groups. The Georgia Topology Conference in 2014 will be centered on the theme of automorphisms of surfaces.
More information can be found on the conference web site www.math.uga.edu/~topology/
