This award supports US invited speakers and US junior researchers attending the "Workshop on Geometric Group Theory", to be held August 9-14, 2010 at Goa University in India. This will be a satellite conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). The workshop will feature a variety of topics which exemplify the central theme of the field, that of approaching group theoretic questions by treating groups as geometric objects. There will be mini-courses on lattices in Lie groups, CAT(0) groups and Out(Fn), which will be aimed at graduate students and researchers new to the field. In addition, there will be about 17 invited research talks in these as well as closely related areas, such as mapping class groups, limit groups, relatively hyperbolic groups and quasi-isometric rigidity.
Geometric group theory is a relatively new field which has been flourishing in recent years. Questions and techniques in geometric group theory come from a startling range of sources: combinatorial group theory, three-manifolds, Riemannian geometry, logic, and algebraic geometry are just a few examples. The interdisciplinary aspect of the field has given rise to a rich theory. This workshop will create a stimulating forum for generating new ideas, by bringing together a variety of participants: leading specialists, junior researchers, and researchers from fields that are related, but not traditionally a part of geometric group theory. This is expected to be mutually beneficial: the sharing of techniques, tools and ideas from different backgrounds is likely to lead to interesting new avenues of research. Further, it will have a positive impact on international collaborations. The workshop will also seek to attract good mathematicians to geometric group theory by providing a well-rounded picture of the current state of research in the field. This will be done through mini-courses which focus on key examples and motivating ideas, and through invited research talks. There will also be short contributed talks, which will provide a platform for young mathematicians to present their research.
) in Goa, India, and August 2010, together with a follow-up (smaller) workshop at Louisianan State University the following year in July. In 2010, the International Congress of Mathematicians (which takes place in a different country every four years) was held in India. This conference is the event at which the Fields Medals, one of the most presitgious awards in mathematics, are given out, and it is attended by numerous mathematicians, young and old, experts and novices, from all over the world. As a result it is customary to have a number of smaller, more specialized "satellite" conferences in the same region as the congress. The Workshop in Geometric Group Theory was one such satellite conference. The goal was primarily to train junior researchers, as well as researchers new to the field, in the fundamentals of the area. This was achieved through mini-courses by experts, which were accompanied by problem sessions. Young researchers who already had started on research were given a platform to present their findings, thereby provding them with valuable experience in giving conference presentations. Another goal was to strengthen collaborations between US and foreign mathematicians. There were several countries represented among the participants, and thanks to the support of the NSF, several US mathematicians could be supported to travel to the conference, and further this goal. For the follow up workshop in the second year, the goal was to continue the professional training of beginning researchers in the area. To this end, several of the graduate students who attended the first workshop, but had not had the opportunity (or the research) to present, were invited to the second workshop to present their results. Three experts were invited to give educational talks about their research, and provide networking opportunities to the graduate students. The students were therefore able to hone their networking and disseminating skills in a setting which was less intimidating than a full-fledged conference. Thus the two workshops were a valuable resource for people in the field of geometric group theory. Moreover, the first workshop made an important contribution to the fostering of internaional collaborations.
