This proposal will support U.S.-based participants attending the second session of the "Young Geometric Group Theory" meeting to be held at the Center for Mathematical Sciences at the Technion in Haifa, Israel on February 3-7, 2013.There will be four senior speakers giving mini-courses on fundamental topics, as well as seven outstanding postdocs giving short talks on their work. The planned mini-courses and talks will cover various aspect of geometric group theory such as CAT(0)-cube complexes, quasi-isometric rigidity, automorphisms of free groups and systolic complexes, and make connections with other fields of mathematics including representation theory, geometric measure theory, ergodic theory, differential geometry and model theory.
Geometric group theory is a fairly young and dynamic field studied by an international community of researchers. Most of the workshop attendees will be early-career mathematicians; the schedule is designed to maximize the interactions among young researchers, as well as to give them extended contact with leading experts in the field. A website for the conference is at www.math.technion.ac.il/cms/decade_2011-2020/year_2012-2013/.