The project is aimed at sponsoring the travel of a number of young researchers and mathematicians belonging to under represented minorities from US to the Fields Institute, to attend the meeting "Multivariate Operator Theory", for the duration of a week in August 2009. Multivariate operator theory is a very dynamic branch of modern analysis which has emerged in to a full area of research in the last two decades with contributions from classical operator theory, differential geometry, complex analysis of several complex variables, Lie group representations, global analysis and local commutative algebra. Its fundamental interdisciplinary structure makes imperative that the various groups of experts meet regularly and exchange their latest ideas and contributions. The conference will have a modest schedule with significant breaks to allow collaboration, discussion of new problems and informal interaction. The young participants will have a unique opportunity to have an overview of the field of multivariate operator theory, to grasp its present challenges and meet experts in contingent areas of mathematics.
The impact of the meeting beyond operator theory, to areas of differential geometry, complex analytic geometry, function theory, index theory and group representations will be significant. The well established existing links between these fields (for instance via K-theory, or via topological cohomology) offer a solid framework for sustaining the interdisciplinary component of the meeting.