9806904 Ramm This Americas Program award will help to support an international conference on operator theory and applications in Winnipeg. Canada. Professor Alexander Ramm of Kansas State University and Professor A. Strauss of the University of Ulyanovsk, Russia are the co-chairs of the Program Committee, and with Professor P. N. Shivakumar, Director of the Canadian Institute of Industrial Mathematical Sciences (IIMS) and chair of the local organizing committee, are the principal organizers of the conference. The activity will bring together leading experts to cover a broad range of topics in operator theory and its applications to scientific and industrial problems, financial mathematics and biomathematics. The conference is the second in a quadrennial series of international meetings dedicated to operator theory and its applications. While the designated speakers are international authorities on diverse areas of mathematics and reflect the broad impact of operator theory, the conference organizers plan to invite graduate students and young researchers to enhance the educational value of the meeting. Because of the high quality and international diversity of the participants, support for this conference is being jointly shared with the Eastern Europe Program of the Division of International Programs and with the Division of Mathematical Sciences. An expected outcome of this workshop will be a report on the current status and future directions for the field of operator theory. ***