9703871 Sommese This award supports a conference in algebraic geometry designed to promote interaction among the many people in the midwestern United States working on algebraic geometric questions. The conference is particularly aimed at the many graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and more senior active researchers in this area, who are isolated because of location and lack the resources to travel. This conference will have major speakers representing algebraic, algorithmic, and geometric viewpoints of the broad field. Algebraic geometry has a long and important history in mathematics, particularly because it interacts with so many other fields of mathematics, such as topology, analysis, algebra, and number theory. It has flourished during the last half of the twentieth century, especially in this country. At its simplest and most fundamental level, algebraic geometry studies sets defined by polynomial equations. Such sets arise in many problems in computer science and robotics, and there is increasing interaction between algebraic geometry and these fields.
