This award provides partial support to U.S. based participants at a conference titled "Combinatorial and Algebraic Aspects of Geometric Structures" which will be held July 22 through July 26, 2019 at Chiang Mai University, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This conference aims to build on existing collaborations between researchers at the University of Illinois, Chiang Mai University, National University of Singapore, and the University of Luxembourg, and more broadly from Europe, Asia, and North America. The conference will include general research talks and mini-course lectures aimed at graduate students and postdocs, as well as five-minute lightning talks by graduate students and postdocs, providing them an opportunity to share their research and spark conversations with other participants. The venue will provide the opportunity for US researchers to make new connections with their counterparts from European and Asian countries, in particular those from the latter countries for whom it may not be feasible to travel internationally.
The theme of the conference, as the title suggests, is quite broad and involves topics such as geometric structures on manifolds, including hyperbolic and flat structures on surfaces, exotic geometric structures arising from representations into other Lie groups, and coarse geometric structures arising from geometric group theory. The speakers are chosen to represent a coherent mix of topics from this list, to maximize the potential for new collaborations and cross-fertilization of areas. For example, Maloni's research is in both hyperbolic and mixed-signature geometric structures meshes very well with Bridgeman and Canary's work on higher Teichmueller theory as well as hyperbolic geometry. Existing collaborations between the PI and researchers from Chiang Mai, Thailand, Singapore, and Luxembourg, as well as collaborations between researchers from those locations, will also provide a starting point for new collaborations. Additional details about the conference can be found on the conference website: www.math.science.cmu.ac.th/lst/index.php
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
