The Tech Topology Conference will be held December 9-11 at Georgia Institute of Technology. This is a new annual conference on geometry and topology, with an emphasis on highlighting and enhancing research being done in the Southeast US. We will have seven speakers, in the areas of contact topology, geometric group theory, and knot theory, and we will have participants from Georgia Tech, Florida State, Sevilla, Emory, Georgia, Columbia, Penn State, Rice, Clemson, and Tennessee. Over the past few years, there has been an incredible amount of cross-fertilization between the fields of surface topology, contact topology, knot theory, and group theory. At this conference, we will have specialists in each of these areas, whose work lies at the interface of two more more of these areas. As such, the conference will be a fertile ground for new ideas in geometry and topology.
The main goals of the conference are (1) To provide a high-profile geometry-topology conference to the Southeast that brings leaders of the field to the area as well as showcases the high quality mathematics being done in the Southeast, and (2) To provide a convenient meeting place for Southeastern researchers and students to gather, discuss, research, and interact with leading mathematicians from across the country. This conference will be a valuable learning environment for graduate students and junior faculty in the Southeast, and will help raise the profile of the region. We will provide ample time for the participants to meet, formally and informally, for example during long breaks between talks and organized discussion sessions. We plan to post notes from all the talks on the conference web site. More information can be found on the conference web site: http://ttc.gatech.edu
is a new annual conference whose primary aim is to promote the Geometry/Topology community in the Southeast. This is accomplished by bringing in leading mathematicians from around the country to give lectures and interact with the local participants, and also by providing a highly visible platform for local participants to present their results. The inaugural conference in 2011 was successful in this endeavor. There were seven talks, including a colloquium given by Benson Farb (Chicago), a research talk by Georgia Tech graduate student Bulent Tosun, and other lectures by Pallavi Dani (LSU), Josh Greene (BC), Shelly Harvey (Rice), Lenny Ng (Duke), and Kate Petersen (FSU). The topics of the lectures ranged from representation theory to geometric group theory to knot theory and contact topology. Aside from the speakers, we had about 15 local participants and about 25 non-local participants. The schedule allowed for ample interaction for the participants. The large and diverse group of participants allowed many of the attendees to to further their research programs by speaking with other participants. In addition many of the graduate students managed to talk with senior mathematicians about their thesis projects. All of these interactions contributed to the intellectual merit of the conference. The web site for the Tech Topology Conference contains notes from all seven talks. We have also included some extra material on the web site, for instance some discussion of open problems. This coupled with the dissemination of ideas that occurred at the conference provided the main contribution to the broader impacts of the conference.
