40^th Texas Geometry and Topology Conference

October 10-12, 2008

University of Texas at Austin

List of speakers with extended abstracts

Schedule with abstracts

Introduction

The Texas Geometry and Topology Conference (TGTC) is supported by the National Science Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin. Everyone is welcome. There are no registration fees. (However, we can no longer accept requests for support.) Please see the registration page.

TGTC is committed to the strengthening and enrichment of the mathematics personnel base. Graduate students, junior faculty, women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are especially encouraged to participate and to apply for support.

Further information on the history of the Texas Geometry and Topology Conference can be found at the TGTC archive

List of speakers with extended abstracts

Lewis Bowen (Hawai’i) Free subgroups of lattices

Jeff Cheeger (Courant) Differentiable structures on metric measure spaces

Tom Farrell (Binghamton) The space of negatively-curved metrics on a closed manifold

Joel Hass (UC-Davis) Harmonic maps and the stabilization of Heegaard splittings

Chikako Mese (Johns Hopkins) Harmonic maps in singular spaces

Hossein Namazi (Austin) Splittings, Hyperbolic Geometry and Models

Yi Ni (AIM & MIT) Dehn surgeries that reduce the Thurston norm of a fibered manifold

Stefano Vidussi (UC Riverside) Twisted Alexander polynomials and fibered 3-manifolds

Schedule with abstracts

The conference takes place in Robert Lee Moore Hall (RLM).

Talks are in the mathematics lecture room RLM 6.104.

Breaks are in the Vaughn Lounge, RLM 12.104.

The schedule is below. Click here for a printable version.

Friday, October 10

5:00-7:00 Registration and complimentary buffet (Vaughn Lounge, RLM 12.104)

7:00-8:00 Hossein Namazi: Splittings, Hyperbolic Geometry and Models (RLM 6.104)

Saturday, October 11

9:00-10:00 Coffee, tea, juice, and bagels (Vaughn Lounge, RLM 12.104)

10:00-11:00 Yi Ni: Dehn surgeries that reduce the Thurston norm of a fibered manifold (RLM 6.104)

11:30-12:30 Chikako Mese: Harmonic maps in singular spaces (RLM 6.104)

12:30-2:00 Lunch (Click here for some suggestions.)

2:00-3:00 Stefano Vidussi: Twisted Alexander polynomials and fibered 3-manifolds (RLM 6.104)

3:00-3:30 Coffee, tea, and snacks (Vaughn Lounge, RLM 12.104)

3:30-4:30 Joel Hass: Harmonic maps and the stabilization of Heegaard splittings (RLM 6.104)

5:00-6:00 Jeff Cheeger: Differentiable structures on metric measure spaces (RLM 6.104)

7:00-9:00 Conference bienvenidos – Texas style (Cuatro’s)

Sunday, October 12

9:00-10:00 Coffee, tea, juice, and bagels (Vaughn Lounge, RLM 12.104)

10:00-11:00 Lewis Bowen: Free subgroups of lattices (RLM 6.104)

11:30-12:30 Tom Farrell: The space of negatively-curved metrics on a closed manifold (RLM 6.104)

Registration

Everyone planning to attend TGTC should register here !

Note that the deadline for requesting support (Friday, September 19, 2008) has passed.

Lodging

If you need lodging in Austin but are not requesting support, you should make your own hotel reservations. Here are some choices with reasonable proximity to campus.

Travel tips

Austin-Bergstrom Airport

Public transportation in Austin

Austin Airport Flyer bus schedule

Finding campus

Campus maps

Places to eat near campus

An interactive guide to nearby restaurants

Acknowledgments

The organizers, Alan Reid and Dan Knopf, thank the National Science Foundation and UT-Austin for their support.

The image of the Alexander horned sphere (above) is in the public domain; it comes from Wikimedia Commons.