In recent years, economists and computer scientists have collaborated with mathematicians, operations research experts, and practitioners to improve the design and operations of real-world marketplaces. Such work relies on robust feedback between theory and practice, inspiring new mathematics closely linked – and directly applicable – to market and mechanism design questions. This cross-disciplinary program seeks to expand the domains in which existing market design solutions can be applied; address foundational questions regarding our ways of developing and evaluating mechanisms; and build useful analytic frameworks for applying theory to practical marketplace design.

<p>A graphical representation of a Markov Chain fairness analysis of a political districting in North Carolina from Chin, Herschlag, Mattingly</p>

This program aims to bring together researchers working at the interface of fairness and computation. This interface has been the site of intensive research effort in mechanism design, in research on partitioning problems related to political districting problems, and in research on ways to address issues of fairness and equity in the context of machine learning algorithms.

These areas each approach the relationship between mathematics and fairness from a distinct perspective. In mechanism design, algorithms are a tool to achieve outcomes with mathematical guarantees of various notions of fairness. In machine learning, we perceive failures of fairness as an undesirable side effect of learning approaches, and seek mathematical approaches to understand and mitigate these failures. And in partitioning problems like political districting, we often seek mathematical tools to evaluate the fairness of human decisions.

This program will explore progress in these areas while also providing a venue for overlapping perspectives. The topics workshop “Randomization, neutrality, and fairness” will explore the common role randomness and probability has played in these lines of work.

The Complementary Program has a limited number of memberships that are open to mathematicians whose interests are not closely related to the core programs; special consideration is given to mathematicians who are partners of an invited member of a core program. 

Drawing by Tina Zhang.

This workshop is about the recent MIP*=RE result from quantum computational complexity, and the resulting resolution of the Connes embedding problem from the theory of von Neumann algebras. MIP*=RE connects the disparate areas of computational complexity theory, quantum information, operator algebras, and approximate representation theory. The aim of this workshop is to bridge this divide, by giving an in-depth exposition of the techniques used in the proof of MIP*=RE, and highlighting perspectives on the MIP*=RE result from operator algebras and approximate representation theory. In particular, this workshop will highlight connections with group stability, something that has not been covered in previous workshops. In addition to increasing understanding of the MIP*=RE proof, we hope that this will open up further applications of the ideas behind MIP*=RE in operator algebras.

This workshop will look at the idea of fairness and neutrality in algorithms and decision-making. How it relates to the idea of randomization and how randomization can be employed in the pursuit of neutrality and fairness. The goal is both to bring together state-of-the-art research and explore the implications and limitations of the deployment in the real world.

The workshop is aimed at exploring core subjects in the field of market and mechanism design, such as the design of non-convex auction markets, the design of matching markets with preferences, algorithmic mechanism design, and learning in games. These topics are interrelated and deeply rooted in mathematics and computer science. Each day of the 4-day workshop is devoted to one of these topics with talks by leading scholars in the field and panel discussions on major open problems.

Blood flow and structure displacement in an Aortic Abdominal Aneurysm

This workshop will focus on the coupled dynamical interaction between fluids and elastic/poroelastic structures, with an emphasis on the most recent and cutting-edge mathematical advances in deterministic and stochastic fluid-structure interaction. The goal of this workshop is to bring together a diverse group of mathematicians in the fields of analysis, modeling, numerics, stochastics, and real-world applications in order to showcase an interdisciplinary approach to the study of coupled fluid-structure systems. A major component of this workshop will be to encourage active participation of early career researchers, such as graduate students and postdocs, and foster synergistic collaboration with established leaders in the field.

Image for theorem about 9 point on cubic curve, the special case of Cayley–Bacharach theorem.

Commutative algebra is, in its essence, the study of algebraic objects, such as rings and modules over them, arising from polynomials and integral numbers.     It has numerous connections to other fields of mathematics including algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, algebraic topology and algebraic combinatorics. Commutative Algebra has witnessed a number of spectacular developments in recent years, including the resolution of long-standing problems, with new techniques and perspectives leading to an extraordinary transformation in the field. The main focus of the program will be on these developments. These include the recent solution of Hochster's direct summand conjecture in mixed characteristic that employs the theory of perfectoid spaces, a new approach to the Buchsbaum--Eisenbud--Horrocks conjecture on the Betti numbers of modules of finite length, recent progress on the study of Castelnuovo--Mumford regularity, the proof of Stillman's conjecture and ongoing work on its effectiveness, a novel strategy to Green's conjecture on the syzygies of canonical curves based on the study of Koszul modules and their generalizations, new developments in the study of various types of multiplicities, theoretical and computational aspects of Gröbner bases, and the implicitization problem for Rees algebras and its applications.

Optical illusion staircase

Derived categories of coherent sheaves on algebraic varieties were originally conceived as technical tools for studying cohomology, but have since become central objects in fields ranging from algebraic geometry to mathematical physics, symplectic geometry, and representation theory. Noncommutative algebraic geometry is based on the idea that any category sufficiently similar to the derived category of a variety should be regarded as (the derived category of) a “noncommutative algebraic variety”; examples include semiorthogonal components of derived categories, categories of matrix factorizations, and derived categories of noncommutative dg-algebras. This perspective has led to progress on old problems, as well as surprising connections between seemingly unrelated areas. In recent years there have been great advances in this domain, including new tools for constructing semiorthogonal decompositions and derived equivalences, progress on conjectures relating birational geometry and singularities to derived categories, constructions of moduli spaces from noncommutative varieties, and instances of homological mirror symmetry for noncommutative varieties. The goal of this program is to explore and expand upon these developments. 

Emmy Noether (1882-1935), a prominent founder of commutative ring theory

This two-day workshop will feature the work of mathematicians in commutative algebra who identify as women or another marginalized gender. The talks will be appropriate for graduate students, post-docs, and researchers in areas related to the program. This meeting aims to support young researchers. The format will include plenary talks, poster sessions, panel discussions, as well as the opportunity for informal discussions and connections.  The workshop is open to all mathematicians, and members of historically excluded groups and identities are especially encouraged to attend.

Fractal behavior of local cohomology. For details, see arXiv:2210.03656 by Gao and Raicu

The Introductory Workshop will feature lecture series devoted to some recent breakthrough results in commutative algebra, and to new developments in core areas of the field.  It will also highlight links to other areas such as arithmetic geometry, representation theory, noncommutative geometry, and singularity theory.

This two-day workshop will feature the work of mathematicians in noncommutative geometry who identify as women or another marginalized gender. The talks will be appropriate for graduate students, post-docs, and researchers in areas related to the program. This meeting aims to support young researchers.

The workshop will focus on recent developments in noncommutative algebraic geometry including Derived Algebraic Geometry, Categorical and Noncommutative Resolutions, Deformation Theory, and Enumerative Geometry.

The format will include plenary talks, a poster session, panel discussions, as well as the opportunity for informal discussions and connections in noncommutative geometry. The workshop is open to all mathematicians, and members of historically excluded groups and identities are especially encouraged to attend.

A paper fortune teller illustrating the Atiyah flop.

This introductory workshop will consist of a combination of minicourses addressing core topics in noncommutative algebraic geometry and research lectures describing recent developments in the field.  The workshop will focus on subjects connected to algebraic geometry, category theory, and mirror symmetry such as categorical and noncommutative resolutions, deformation theory, derived categories in algebraic geometry, derived algebraic geometry, infinity categories, and enumerative geometry.

The affine line arrangement of type C with different lattices and toric arrangements arising from it.

This workshop brings together experts from different areas to discuss and foster collaboration on several topics of current interest related to Artin groups such as the K(π, 1) conjecture, hyperplane arrangements and abelian arrangements, combinatorial structures associated with dual Coxeter systems, and complexes of nonpositive curvature.

Optical illusion staircase

This workshop will give an overview of recent developments in non-commutative algebraic geometry, including NC projective AG, NC resolutions, semiorthogonal decompositions, enhancements of derived categories, and connections to homological mirror symmetry, to enumerative AG, to moduli spaces and to birational geometry. It will in particular focus on speakers who have built new bridges between these topics.

Many long-standing conjectures in commutative algebra have been solved in recent years, often through the introduction of new methods that are quickly becoming central to the field.  This workshop will bring together a wide array of researchers in commutative algebra and related fields, with the goal of forging new connections among topics, and with a particular emphasis on transformative new methods.

This workshop will have a view to the future of a broad spectrum of topics including

• structure and classification of finite dimensional Lie algebras and superalgebras in characteristic p
• structure of infinite dimensional Lie algebras and their representations
• deformation theory of algebras, double constructions and elemental Lie algebras
• diagram algebras and combinatorial representation theory
• algebraic combinatorics of groups of Lie type:characters, Schur-Weyl duality, Bratteli diagrams, and McKay correspondences
• quantum groups and crystal bases, particularly for superalgebras and affine algebras
• examples of fusion categories arising from representations of Drinfeld doubles and other algebras
• cohomology for finite tensor categories with applications to its underlying geometry

This meeting will feature principal contributors in these areas in a celebration of the work of Georgia Benkart. With the same focus and tenacity that Georgia always had, we will strive to provide a conference full of beautiful mathematics, incredible inspiration, and the warmth of Georgia’s welcoming personality to our field and our community.

This school will present various developments in Riemannian and Kähler geometry around the notion of curvature seen as a tool to describe and understand the geometry of the objects. The school will give graduate students the opportunity to learn key ideas and techniques of the field, with an emphasis on solidifying foundations in view of potential future research. The first week will be centered around the question of the existence of Kähler metrics with special curvature properties and the famous Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture. The second week will focus on geometric flows in Riemannian and complex geometry. 

MSRI/SLMath's Summer Research in Mathematics program provides space, funding, and the opportunity for in-person collaboration to small groups of mathematicians, especially women and gender-expansive individuals, whose ongoing research may have been disproportionately affected by various obstacles including family obligations, professional isolation, or access to funding. Through this effort, MSRI/SLMath aims to mitigate the obstacles faced by these groups, improve the odds of research project completion, and deepen their research experience. The ultimate goal of this program is to enhance the mathematical sciences as a whole by positively affecting the research and careers of all of its participants and assisting their efforts to maintain involvement in the research community.

The ultimate goal of this program is to enhance the mathematical sciences as a whole by positively affecting the research and careers of all of its participants and assisting their efforts to maintain involvement in the research community.

The MSRI-UP summer program is designed to serve a diverse group of undergraduate students who would like to conduct research in the mathematical sciences.

In 2024, MSRI-UP will focus on Mathematical Endocrinology. The research program will be led by Dr. Erica J. Graham, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College.

This summer school will focus on the introductory notions related to the passage of Newtonian and quantum many-body dynamics to kinetic collisional models of Boltzmann flow models arising in statistical sciences in connection to model reductions when continuum macro dynamics arises; and their numerical schemes associated to transport of kinetic processes in classical and data driven mean field dynamics incorporating recent tools from computational kinetics and data science tools. There will be two sets of lectures: “From Newton to Boltzmann to Fluid dynamics”, and “Kinetic collisional theory in mean field regimes: analysis, discrete approximations, and applications”. Each lecture series will be accompanied by a collaboration session, led by the lecturer and teaching assistants. The purpose of the collaboration sessions is to encourage and strengthen higher-level thinking of the materials taught in the lectures and to direct further reading for interested students. Interactive learning activities will be conducted. For example, students will be given problem sets associated with the lectures and will work in small groups to discuss concepts and/or find solutions to assigned problems. The students will also be encouraged to give oral or poster presentations on their solutions or other materials relevant to the course.

a Calabi-Yau manifold

This summer school will serve as an introduction to the SLMath program "Special geometric structures and analysis". There will be two mini-courses: one in Geometric Measure theory and the other in Microlocal Analysis. The aim is to give the basic notions of two subjects also treated during the program.

ADJOINT is a yearlong program that provides opportunities for U.S. mathematicians – especially those from the African Diaspora – to conduct collaborative research on topics at the forefront of mathematical and statistical research. Participants will spend two weeks taking part in an intensive collaborative summer session at SLMath (formerly MSRI). The two-week summer session for ADJOINT 2024 will take place June 24 to July 5, 2024 in Berkeley, California. Researchers can participate in either of the following ways: (1) joining ADJOINT small groups under the guidance of some of the nation's foremost mathematicians and statisticians to expand their research portfolio into new areas, or (2) applying to Self-ADJOINT as part of an existing or newly-formed independent research group to work on a new or established research project. Throughout the following academic year, the program provides conference and travel support to increase opportunities for collaboration, maximize researcher visibility, and engender a sense of community among participants. 

Post-quantum cryptography can be based on lattices, codes, isogenies, and multiquadratic equations

This two week summer school, jointly organized by SLMath with IBM Zurich, will introduce students to the mathematics and algorithms used in the design and analysis of quantum-safe cryptosystems. Each week will be dedicated to two of the four families of quantum-safe schemes.

This summer school will familiarize students with the basic problems of the mathematical theory of Euclidean quantum fields. The lectures will introduce some of its prominent models and analyze them via the so called “stochastic quantization” methods, involving recently developed stochastic and PDE techniques. This is an area which is highly interdisciplinary combining ideas ranging from the theory of partial differential equations, to stochastic analysis, to mathematical physics. Our goal is to bring together students who are perhaps familiar with some but not all of these subjects and teach them how to integrate these different tools to solve cutting-edge problems of Euclidean quantum field theory.

This summer school provides the mathematical background to recognize Koszul duality in representation theory. The school is especially oriented toward applications in the local Langlands program, with an emphasis on real groups. As Koszul duality patterns have been initially observed in the context of Hecke algebras, our school will also introduce the students to Hecke algebras and their categorifications.

The image of a large sphere isometrically embedded into a small space through a C^1 embedding. (Attributions: E. Bartzos, V. Borrelli, R. Denis, F. Lazarus, D. Rohmer, B. Thibert)

This two week summer school, jointly organized by SLMath with RIKEN, will introduce graduate students to the theory of h-principles.  After building up the theory from basic smooth topology, we will focus on more recent developments of the theory, particularly applications to symplectic and contact geometry, fluid dynamics, and foliation theory.

h-principles in smooth topology (Emmy Murphy)
Riemannian geometry and applications to fluid dynamics (Dominik Inauen)
Contact and symplectic flexibility (Emmy Murphy)
Foliation theory and diffeomorphism groups (Takashi Tsuboi)

In the last few years, there have been extraordinary developments in many aspects of curve theory. Beginning with many examples in low genus, this summer school will introduce the participants to the background behind these developments in the following areas:

1. moduli spaces of stable curves
2. Brill–Noether theory
3. the extrinsic geometry of the curves in projective space

We will also include an introduction to some open problems at the forefront of these active areas.

The study of tensor categories involves the interplay of representation theory, combinatorics, number theory, and low dimensional topology (from a string diagram calculation, describing the 3-dimensional bordism 2-category [arXiv:1411.0945]).

Symmetry, as formalized by group theory, is ubiquitous across mathematics and science. Classical examples include point groups in crystallography, Noether's theorem relating differentiable symmetries and conserved quantities, and the classification of fundamental particles according to irreducible representations of the Poincaré group and the internal symmetry groups of the standard model. However, in some quantum settings, the notion of a group is no longer enough to capture all symmetries. Important motivating examples include Galois-like symmetries of von Neumann algebras, anyonic particles in condensed matter physics, and deformations of universal enveloping algebras. The language of tensor categories provides a unified framework to discuss these notions of quantum symmetry.

ALCF Visualization and Data Analytics Team; Adam Burrows and the Princeton Supernova Theory Group, Princeton University

This summer school will give an accessible introduction to the mathematical study of general relativity, a field which in the past has had barriers to entry due to its interdisciplinary nature, and whose study has been concentrated at specific institutions, to a wider audience of students studying at institutions throughout the U.S., Europe and Greece. Another goal of the summer school will be to demonstrate the common underlying mathematical themes in many problems which traditionally have been studied by separate research communities.

The summer school is an introduction to the representation theory and harmonic analysis of reductive p-adic groups and will feature several lecture series covering the structure of reductive p-adic groups, the classification of their representations, key results from harmonic analysis, an introduction to the local Langlands conjectures, as well as connections to automorphic forms, real reductive groups, and finite groups of Lie type. Active engagement of the student through problem and Q&A sessions will be an important component. The goal is to equip students with knowledge that would help them to perform research in this area or apply these tools in nearby areas.

This two week summer school, jointly organized by SLMath with OIST, will offer the following two mini-courses:

1. Measure-theoretical analysis, divergence-measure fields, and nonlinear PDEs of divergence form
   This course will present some recent developments in the theory of divergence-measure fields via measure-theoretic analysis and its applications to the analysis of nonlinear PDEs of conservative form – nonlinear conservation laws.
2. Perron’s method and Wiener-type criteria in the potential theory of elliptic and parabolic PDEs
   This course will present some recent developments precisely characterizing the regularity of the point at ∞ for second order elliptic and parabolic PDEs and broadly extending the role of the Wiener test in classical analysis.

An ultrametric matrix with 4-step replica symmetry breaking

While their original aim was to explain the strange behavior of certain magnetic alloys, the study of spin glass models has led to a far-reaching and beautiful physical theory whose techniques have been applied to a myriad of problems in theoretical computer science, statistics, optimization and biology. As many of the physical predictions can be formulated as purely mathematical questions, often extremely hard, about large random systems in high dimensions, in recent decades a new area of research has emerged in probability theory around these problems.

Mathematically, a mean-field spin glass model is a Gaussian process (random function) on the discrete hypercube or the sphere in high dimensions. A fundamental challenge in their analysis is, roughly speaking, to understand the size and structure of their super-level sets as the dimension tends to infinity, which are often studied through smooth objects like the free energy and Gibbs measure whose origin is in statistical physics. The aim of the summer school is to introduce students to landmark results on the latter while emphasizing the techniques an ideas that were developed to obtain them, as well as exposing the students to some recent research topics.

Soap bubble: equilibrium solution of the mean curvature flow and constant curvature surface.

Geometry, PDE, and Relativity are subjects that have shown intriguing interactions in the past several decades, while simultaneously diverging, each with an ever growing number of branches. Recently, several major breakthroughs have been made in each of these fields using techniques and ideas from the others. 

This program is aimed at connecting various branches of Geometry, PDE, and Relativity and at enhancing collaborations across these disciplines and will include four main topics: Geometric Flows, Geometric problems in Mathematical Relativity, Global Riemannian Geometry, and Minimal Submanifolds. Specifically the program focuses on a central goal, which is to advance our knowledge toward Riemannian (sub)manifolds under geometric conditions, such as curvature lower bounds, by developing techniques in, for example, geometric flows and minimal submanifolds and further fostering new connections.

“Plateau’s Memory ” (by A. van der Net): A soap film with singularities

This program sits at the intersection between differential geometry and analysis but also connects to several other adjacent mathematical fields and to theoretical physics. Differential geometry aims to answer questions about very regular geometric objects (smooth Riemannian manifolds) using the tools of differential calculus. A fundamental object is the curvature tensor of a Riemannian metric: an algebraically complicated object that involves 2nd partial derivatives of the metric. Many questions in differential geometry can therefore be translated into questions about the existence or properties of the solutions of systems of (often) nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). The PDE systems that arise in geometry have historically stimulated the development of powerful new analytic methods. In most cases the nonlinearity of these systems makes ‘closed form’ expressions for a solution impossible: instead more abstract methods must be employed.

Geosurface

This three-day workshop will consist of various talks given by prominent female mathematicians on topics of differential geometry and geometric analysis. These will be appropriate for graduate students, post-docs, and researchers in areas related to the two programs.  The workshop will also include activities to promote interaction and connection between participants. This workshop is open to all mathematicians.

The spatial Schwarzschild space with minimal surface boundary foliated by the inverse mean curvature flow

This workshop will include introductory lectures on each of the four main topics of the program: geometric flows, geometric problems in mathematical relativity, global Riemannian geometry, and minimal submanifolds. The workshop will also have semi-expository lectures on recent advances and breakthroughs involving interactions between the four main topics. This will set the stage and provide important context for the semester-long program itself. 

This workshop aims to prepare the participants for the main program: Special Geometric Structures and Analysis.
There will be introductory lectures to recent results in geometry and analysis; more precisely in Kähler geometry, special holonomy, microlocal analysis and geometric measure theory

<p>The Hopf fibration of <span class="math-tex">\(S^3 \space by \space S^1\)</span></p>

This workshop will bring together researchers at the frontiers of geometric analysis and Riemannian geometry, with a focus on recent advances on geometric flows, geometric problems in mathematical relativity, global Riemannian geometry, and minimal submanifolds. These areas have shown highly intriguing interactions in recent years and we expect this workshop will provide a unique opportunity to facilitate these emerging links.

The minimum spanning tree of 100,000 uniformly random points. Colors encode graph distance from the root, which is red. Black points are those whose removal would disconnect at least 5% of the points from the rest.

Random graphs and related random discrete structures lie at the forefront of applied probability and statistics, and are core topics across a wide range of scientific disciplines where mathematical ideas are used to model and understand real-world networks. At the same time, random graphs pose challenging mathematical and algorithmic problems that have attracted attention from probabilists and combinatorialists since at least 1960, following the pioneering work of Erdős and Renyi.

Around the turn of the millennium, as very large data sets became available, several applied disciplines started to realize that many real-world networks, even though they are from various origins, share fascinating features. In particular, many such networks are small worlds, meaning that graph distances in them are typically quite small, and they are scale-free, in the sense that the number of connections made by their elements is extremely heterogeneous. This program is devoted to the study of the probabilistic and statistical properties of such networks. Central tools include graphon theory for dense graphs, local weak convergence for sparse graphs, and scaling limits for the critical behavior of graphs or stochastic processes on them. The program is aimed at pure and applied mathematicians interested in network problems.

Extremal combinatorics concerns itself with problems about how large or small a finite collection of objects can be while satisfying certain conditions. Questions of this type arise naturally across mathematics, so this area has close connections and interactions with a broad array of other fields, including number theory, group theory, model theory, probability, statistical physics, optimization, and theoretical computer science.

The area has seen huge growth in the twenty-first century and, particularly in recent years, there has been a steady stream of solutions to important longstanding problems and many powerful new methods have been introduced. These advances include improvements in absorption techniques which have facilitated the proof of the existence of designs and related objects, the breakthrough on the sunflower conjecture whose further development eventually led to the proof of the Kahn–Kalai conjecture in discrete probability and the discovery of interactions between spectral graph theory and the study of equiangular lines in discrete geometry. These and other groundbreaking advances will be the central theme of the semester program on “Extremal Combinatorics” at SLMath.

In this program, we will bring together experts as well as enthusiastic young researchers to learn from each other, to initiate and continue collaborations, to communicate recent work, and to further advance the field by making progress on fundamental open problems and developing further connections with other branches of mathematics. We trust that younger mathematicians will greatly contribute to the success of the program with their new ideas. It is our hope that this program will provide a unique opportunity for women and underrepresented groups to make outstanding contributions to the field and we strongly encourage their participation.

AI-generated interpretation of a random network

This two-day workshop will bring together researchers from discrete mathematics, probability theory, theoretical computer science, and statistics to explore topics at their interface. The focus will be on probability and statistics of random discrete structures, as well as their applications, including in computer science and physical systems. The workshop will celebrate academic and gender diversity, bringing together women and men at junior and senior levels of their careers from mathematics, physics, and computer science.

Visualization of a network constructed using simple probabilistic rules, showing the emergence of hubs and other macroscopic network phenomenon. From https://graph-tool.skewed.de

Networks, graph driven algorithms, and dynamics on graphs such as epidemics, random walks and centrality measures all play a major role, both in our daily lives as well as many scientific and engineering disciplines. This introductory workshop will bring together experts and junior researchers in combinatorics, probability, and statistics to share a broad vision of major challenges and objectives, with a primary focus on models of random graphs and their limits, network inference, dynamic processes on networks and algorithms and optimization on random structures. 

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together promising early-career researchers in extremal combinatorics who are women or from underrepresented minorities so that they can meet with, forge connections with, and be inspired by the leading figures in the area. The workshop will include lectures, time for collaborative research, and an informal panel discussion session among female and minority researchers on career issues.

This workshop will feature leading experts in several major areas of graph theory, including extremal, probabilistic and structural aspects of the field. Introductory lectures will form an important part of the program, providing background and motivation, and aimed at a general mathematical audience. Complementing these, research talks will share exciting recent developments in graph theory.

A degree 7 curve passing through 35 points in the plane

Many exciting breakthroughs in combinatorics involve innovative applications of techniques from a wide range of areas such as harmonic analysis, polynomial and linear algebraic methods, spectral graph theory, and representation theory. This workshop will present recent developments in this area and facilitate discussions of research problems.

In recent years techniques from harmonic analysis viz. projection theorems have found striking applications in finitary analysis on homogenous spaces. Such quantitative results have many potential applications to analytic number theory. This workshop will bring together researchers in these areas to further explore these connections.

Recovering communities in a network

In a growing number of applications, one needs to analyze and interpret data coming from massive networks. The statistical problems arising from such applications lead to important mathematical challenges: building novel probabilistic models, understanding the possibilities and limitations for statistical detection and inference, designing efficient algorithms, and understanding the inherent limitations of fast algorithms. The workshop will bring together leading researchers in combinatorial statistics, machine learning, and random graphs in the hope of cross-fertilization of ideas.

Top: Neutrino interactions and neutrino-atom interactions. Bottom: Collision of two "waves"

The focus of the proposed program is on so-called kinetic equations, describing the evolution of the of many-particle interacting systems. These models have the form of statistical flows, with their solutions being either a single or multiple point probability density functions or measures, supported in a space of attributes. The attributes are problem-dependent and can be molecular velocity, energy, opinion, wealth, and many others. The flow then predicts the evolution of the probability measure in time, position in space, and the interchanging of the particles' states by the transition probability.

Probably the most classical kinetic equation is the Boltzmann equation which describes the evolutions of the phase-space density function for a dilute gas under binary molecular collisions. Other well-known classical kinetic models include the Landau equation, Vlasov equation for plasmas or other systems, Fokker-Planck equations or kinetic formulations of various macroscopic or hyperbolic systems.

In recent years, the successes of kinetic theory gave rise to an rapidly increasing variety of mathematical models beyond physics to applications in life sciences, social sciences, economy. Even more recently fascinating connections between kinetic theory and some aspects of data science have emerged.

Kinetic theory has strong and fascinating interactions with a large variety of other fields, including statistical mechanics, stochastic processes, dynamical systems...

The program will strive to give an overview of the novel mathematical tools used in kinetic theory through a broad range of classical and more recent applications.

<p>This figure depicts dynamics of flows on convex cocompact hyperbolic 3-manifolds; where the girl is a traveller along a horocycle.</p>

This research program will bring together two intellectual communities that have made significant advances in the study of discrete subgroups of higher rank semisimple Lie groups: the homogeneous dynamics community and the community studying geometric structures and Anosov groups.

A discrete subgroup Γ of a semisimple Lie group G may be studied from many different viewpoints. On the one hand, the quotient G/Γ is a homogenous space; through the lens of homogeneous dynamics one can study flows on these spaces, their orbit closures, measure classifications, counting and equidistributions. On the other hand, the group G acts on a plethora of different geometries, including Riemannian and non-Riemannian symmetric spaces, projective spaces and flag manifolds. In many cases, this induces interesting properly discontinuous actions of Γ which can be studied using geometric methods. A flexible class of such discrete subgroups is given by Anosov groups, introduced by Labourie in his study of Hitchin representations and now accepted as the natural higher rank analogue of convex cocompact subgroups of rank one Lie groups. In recent years, their study has made tremendous advances by drawing inspiration from classical Teichmuller theory, and the theory of Kleinian groups.

When G has rank one, there has already been a fruitful interaction between the two communities, resulting in important advances in understanding the dynamics of the frame flow and unipotent flow on the frame bundle of convex cocompact and geometrically finite hyperbolic manifolds. In turn this had important applications to Apollonian circle packings, Zaremba’s conjecture, expanders, affine sieve problems for thin groups, and related problems, as well as groundberaking work in Teichmuller dynamics.

Exciting applications of the interaction between homogeneous dynamics and Anosov representations have begun to emerge in recent years, suggesting that now is very promising time to bring together these two communities. The notion of a thin subgroup, inspired from number theory, is one of the many points of convergence. Other recent advances include the study of homogeneous
dynamics in the setting of Borel Anosov groups, relations between the Hausdorff dimension of limit sets of Anosov groups with counting problems, as well as applications of the thermodynamical formalism in the study of Anosov representations. A strong link between Anosov groups and Hilbert geometry recently opened the door to a very active study of dynamics in these geometries.
This recent work seems likely to be just the first fruit of the interaction between dynamics and geometry for discrete subgroups of semisimple Lie groups.

The stable and unstable foliations near a singular orbit of a pseudo- Anosov flow in 3 dimensions. Courtesy Michael Landry.

Low dimensional topology is a meeting place for ideas, objects and techniques that interact richly with each other, and generate implications for many parts of mathematics. Geometric structures, such as hyperbolic structures on 2- and 3-manifolds, interact with dynamical properties of flows and with analysis on parameter spaces such as the Teichmuller space of a surface or a foliation by surfaces. Combinatorial objects such as complexes of curves and their generalizations give us insight into the behavior of mapping class groups, which encapsulate the topological symmetries of a surface, as well as homeomorphism and diffeomorphism groups which blend topology and dynamics.

Seminal work of Thurston in the 1970’s brought many of these ideas together in new ways, and inspired multiple lines of work in the time since then, exploring different aspects of the relationship between geometry, topology, analysis and dynamics. Recent progress in these fields has taken each in new directions, suggesting that refocusing on their interactions will yield dividends towards progress on key problems within this central area and grow outwards towards its many connections with other areas of mathematics.

As examples of structural questions in the overlap of these areas: How do we classify Anosov and pseudo-Anosov flows on 3-manifolds up to orbit equivalence? Can we relate the dynamics of pseudo-Anosov flows on hyperbolic 3-manifolds to the geometry of the underlying 3-manifolds? Can we relate the leafwise Teichmuller theory of a foliation to geometric structures on the underlying 3-manifold? How well can we understand the subgroup structure of homeomorphism and diffeomorphism groups of surfaces? Can mapping class groups of infinite-type surfaces be harnessed to study dynamical questions?

The program will bring together experts in all these fields and younger researchers, who together can address these sorts of questions and open new areas for exploration. 

This workshop is multifaceted. In addition to familiarizing graduate students and other junior participants to the topics of the program, the workshop will also reinforce common ground and language among computer scientists and economists and provide an on-ramp introduction for interested mathematicians.

The Connections Workshop will consist of invited talks from leading researchers at all career stages in the field of market design.  Particular attention will be paid to real-world applications.  There will also be an AMA focused on career paths with highly visible individuals in the field, and a social event intended to help workshop attendees network with each other.