The investigators are organizing at the University of Kentucky the Bluegrass Algebra Conference (April 12-13, 2003) in addition to the third Hayden-Howard lecture delivered by Professor Craig Huneke on April 11, 2003. The lecture honors the contributions of UK faculty members Thomas Hayden and Henry Howard, by bringing an outstanding mathematician to the University of Kentucky each year to deliver a colloquium lecture on research at the forefront of modern Mathematics. The additional conference will consist of ten lectures - accessible to an audience of graduate studens - given by internationally known mathematicians working in Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry: Prof. Shreeram Abhyankar (Purdue), Prof. Stephen Dale Cutkosky (Columbia, Missouri), Prof. Shankar Dutta (Urbana-Champaign), Prof. William Heinzer (Purdue), Prof. Melvin Hochster (Michigan), Prof. Joseph Lipman (Purdue), Prof. Juan Migliore (Notre Dame), Prof. Claudia Polini (Notre Dame), Prof. Bernd Ulrich (Purdue), Prof. Wolmer Vasconcelos (Rutgers). Among the areas to be covered we list: resolutions of singularities, liaison theory, Hilbert functions, tight closure and its applications. We propose that at least 20 graduate students and young researchers within three years from their Ph.D. receive funds to support their participation in these events. The amount requested will be sufficient for travel as well as local expenses.
Commutative Algebra is of central importance among the various branches of Modern Algebra because of the power and efficiency of its structures, which put it in contact with a variety of disciplines, such as Computational Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Control Theory, and Robotics. During the academic year 2002-03, Commutative Algebra is also receiving particular attention because of a year long program, which is currently held at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley under the direction of Professor Huneke. These facts have led the Mathematics Department at the University of Kentucky to select Professor Huneke to deliver the third Hayden-Howard lecture. There are also at least three long term goals that we expect to achieve by organizing the additional Bluegrass Algebra Conference. In first place, we are seeking to increase the collaboration among the strong Algebra groups at nearby major institutions. Our second goal is to encourage and foster scholarly interests within the smaller Algebra groups at the regional institutions in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Finally, we are seeking to expose our graduate students to current trends of research in Algebra and at the same time have them interact with fellow graduate students at other institutions. It is worth recalling that the Department of Mathematics at UK has a successful history in training a large number of students in Algebra.
