This award provides partial support to U.S. based participants of the conference "Classical and quantum 3-manifold topology" to be held at Monash University in Clayton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, from 17 to 21 December 2018, preceded by a workshop for students and early career researchers on 14-15 December 2018. The conference and workshop will promote progress in mathematics by bringing together international researchers in two related areas of topology, encouraging the dissemination of new ideas and results, increasing collaboration, and introducing new researchers to important problems in these fields. This will contribute to the training and development of mathematical talent.
The last four decades have witnessed the discovery of many deep connections between topological quantum field theory (TQFT), low-dimensional topology, and geometric structures on manifolds. This conference is devoted to exploring and strengthening these connections. The specific goals are: first, to provide a venue for sharing new results in these closely related areas. Second, to increase collaboration and communication among research experts globally in these fields. Third, to introduce researchers, especially students and early career researchers, to important open problems and areas of current research, particularly problems lying at the interface of quantum and classical topology in three dimensions. To meet these goals, the conference and workshop will bring together a distinguished international group of mathematicians. The strong scientific program of the conference is expected to encourage researchers working in these subjects to find common ground and lead to new developments. In addition, the introductory talks during the workshop will enable junior mathematicians to learn major research themes and eventually to contribute to these areas. The conference website, which includes further details, is located at: https://sites.google.com/view/cq3dt/home
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
