Algebraic geometry has a strong and broad representation at the research institutions of the Northeastern states. AGNES will be a new series of biannual workshops that intends to further the interaction and collaborations between the algebraic geometers in the area. Each workshop will be held over a weekend at one of the participating institutions. The workshops will include research talks by renowned experts and junior researchers, both from outside the area and within. Professional development sessions and introductory pre-talks will be aimed particularly at graduate students. Every workshop will culminate with an open problem session. It will thus give an opportunity to disseminate recent results and developments, and exchange ideas and views about future directions of algebraic geometry.
Algebraic geometry is the study of spaces defined by polynomial equations. Many of the spaces occurring in nature are of this type, and for this reason algebraic geometry has found diverse applications in the sciences. In particular, there are strong connections with recent work in theoretical physics (string theory). This grant will support a series of algebraic geometry conferences in the Northeastern states. The key aims of the series are to expose graduate students to a broad spectrum of research in the field and to improve communication between the many algebraic geometers in the northeast.
The AGNES (Algebraic Geometry Northeastern Series) workshops are aimed at researchers, especially graduate students and junior (postdoctoral) mathematicians from the universities and colleges in the northeastern states working in the area of algebraic geometry. This is on of the most active and exciting fields of mathematics with deep connections to physics. The key aims of the workshops are to expose graduate students to a broad spectrum of research in the field and to improve communication and collaboration between mathematicians in the northeast. The second AGNES workshop was held at University of Massachusetts at Amherst on April 9-11, 2010. There were 119 participants: 31 tenured-track faculty, 16 postdocs, 70 graduate students, and 2 undergraduate students. There were 7 research talks by Igor Dolgachev (University of Michigan), Phillip Griffiths (Institute for Advanced Studies), Sean Keel (University of Texas), Radu Laza (Stony Brook), Alina Marian (University of Illinois), Rahul Pandharipande (Princeton), and Chenyang Xu (MIT). Many of the talks had preparatory "pre-talks" introducing background and motivating examples aimed specifically at graduate studutents. For the professional development event, David Saltman (Institute for Defence Analyses at Princeton) gave a talk on employment opportunities in the mathematical sciences outside academia. The open problem session consisted of presentations by Phillip Griffiths, Paul Hacking, and Rahul Pandharipande on problems in Hodge theory, moduli of surfaces, and Gromov--Witten theory respectively. There was a poster session on Saturday evening organized by Milena Hering (University of Connecticut) and Jessica Sidman (Mt. Holyoke college). It featured 17 posters by graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduate students. Videos of the lectures, notes from the open problem session, and the posters are available on the conference website www.agneshome.org.
