The 2014 Barrett Lectures will be held June 16-19, 2014 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. This year's conference, entitled "Complex Analysis in Probabilistic Settings," will focus on exciting recent developments in the intersection of these fields. Over the last two decades, there has been productive interplay between the fields of complex analysis and probability, with further connections to discrete mathematics, conformal geometry, and theoretical physics. Examples of this include Schramm-Loewner Evolution and random triangulations. The conference will feature leading researchers, Grégory Miermont and Steffen Rohde, who will each give a three-talk survey lecture series. Additionally, the conference format includes invited plenary talks by senior researchers, shorter communications by early-career participants, and poster and computer demonstration sessions. This project is NSF funding to support travel and other participant costs for approximately 30 participants, especially early-career researchers and graduate students.
The 2014 Barrett Lectures will be the 44th installment of a highly regarded lecture series that began as a tribute to the distinguished scientist John H. Barrett, head of our Mathematics Department at the time of his death in 1969. The past conferences have attracted a distinguished series of speakers and participants. This year's conference topics highlight two notable trends in mathematics, the penetration of probabilistic methods into classical areas and the impact of computer experimentation in studying emergent phenomena. Participants will include established senior mathematicians and the early-career researchers who will push these trends. Early-career mathematicians will have the opportunity to learn from and interact with an international slate of highly regarded researchers.
This NSF project provided a portion of participant expenses for the 2014 Barrett Memorial Lectures, sponsored by the Department of Mathematics of the University of Tennessee. The Lectures, entitled "Complex Analysis in Probabilistic Settings," focused on exciting recent developments in the intersection of these fields. This stimulating four-day conference, organized by Joan Lind (chair) and Kenneth Stephenson, was held June 16--19, 2014 at the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville, TN. The conference featured leading researchers, Gregory Miermont (Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon) and Steffen Rohde (University of Washington), who each gave a three-talk survey lecture series. Complimenting these lectures were invited plenary talks, which were given by a variety of mathematicians, from senior researchers, such as Mario Bonk (UCLA) and Gregory Lawler (University of Chicago), to junior researchers. Additionally, the conference format included a poster and computer demonstration session and time for informal conversations and collaborations. The conference topics highlighted two notable trends in mathematics, the penetration of probabilistic methods into classical areas and the impact of computer experimentation in studying emergent phenomena. Coming from a variety of different backgrounds, the participants shared their diverse perspectives on problems of mutual interest. A selection of terms from the titles illustrates the coverage of the talks: "random curves and conformal welding", "small particle limits", "random walks on transient planar graphs", "fast simulation of Schramm-Loewner evolutions", "computability and conformal mappings", "random surfaces", and "conformal tilings". Not only did the conference bring together researchers from a variety of backgrounds, but also it encouraged interactions among researchers who are at a variety of stages in their careers, including 19 graduate students, 5 postdocs, 6 non-tenured faculty, 18 tenured faculty, 1 emeritus faculty and even 1 undergraduate student. Thanks in part to the NSF funding, we were able to support participants from a variety of institutions across the county as well as bringing some international speakers. This provided for the training and professional development of many early-career mathematicians who learned from and interacted with an international slate of highly regarded researchers.
