This award will cover travel for sixteen early-career mathematicians to attend the International Workshop in Operator Theory and Applications (IWOTA), to be held at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, during August 17 - 21, 2020. The conference is not only the largest operator theory in the world, but it is also considered the premier event that connects operator theory to other disciplines that employ operator theoretic techniques and related mathematical results. IWOTA 2020 will be devoted to all aspects of operator theory and its applications and will feature top researchers from all around the world. Having such a major event organized in Lancaster will also provide a unique opportunity to reinforce research ties between some of the best experts in the field in the United States and United Kingdom.
Many problems in physics, mathematics, and engineering can be best described by representing complex physical entities as large arrays of numbers and mathematical symbols, called matrices. Matrices help us visualize how linear transformations act on vector spaces; determining their structure reveals important properties of the transformations. Hilbert space operators are infinite-dimensional generalizations of matrices. The generalization of a vector is often a function and, as a result, operators are frequently modeled as multiplications on spaces of functions. At present, IWOTA 2020 will consist of four plenary speakers, fourteen semi-plenary speakers, and several special sessions. The topics of the special sessions include operator spaces, quantized function theory and noncommutative Lebesgue spaces, operator algebras and quantum theory, noncommutative probability and random matrices, operator semigroups and functional calculus, spectral theory and differential equations, operators on analytic function spaces and related applications, complex geometry and operator theory, free algebraic geometry, quantum groups and algebraic quantum field theory, linear systems, and a workshop for early-career researchers. The conference website is www.lancaster.ac.uk/maths/iwota2020/.
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.
