ABSTRACT

2015 Redbud Geometry/Topology Conference, 02/01/15 - 01/31/16, Oklahoma State University

This grant supports participation in the Redbud Geometry and Topology Conferences, to be held in the Spring and Fall of 2015. The conferences focus on three-dimensional geometry and topology, the study of different kinds of geometry and shapes of three-dimensional spaces. The conferences are part of an ongoing series of meetings held at universities in Arkansas and Oklahoma, intended to increase interaction and collaboration among young and senior mathematicians in the area. The Spring conference will be held at Oklahoma State University and will feature prominent speakers from across the country and abroad, as well as a graduate student workshop. The Fall conference will be held at the University of Arkansas, with speakers and participants mainly from the University of Arkansas, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University.

The Spring conference will take place April 3-5 2015. The focus of the conference is contact geometry and hyperbolic geometry on low dimensional manifolds. In the hyperbolic thread, the conference will have several talks (by David Futer (Temple U), Efstratia Kalfagianni (Michigan State U), and Jessica Purcell (Brigham Young U)) on the relationships between the combinatorics of knot diagrams and the hyperbolic geometry of their complements, and the connections to quantum invariants such as the Jones polynomial. In the contact thread, the conference will have talks (by Ken Baker (U of Miami), John Etnyre (Georgia Tech), Matt Hedden (Michigan State U), Emmy Murphy (MIT), Sinem Onaran (Hacettepe U), Laura Starkston (U of Texas, Austin), and Andy Wand (U of Nantes)) on recent developments in contact topology, in particular the characterization of tight contact structures in terms of the supporting open book decomposition, the support genus of a knot, and the existence and classification of contact structures in higher dimensions. The first day of the conference will consist of a graduate workshop intended to give background, to help junior researchers engage more fully with the rest of the conference. The meeting will foster increased interaction among young mathematicians in the region. Conference website: http://math.okstate.edu/redbud

This award supported two conferences in geometry and topology. 

The Spring 2015 Redbud Topology Conference was held at Oklahoma State University, 
April 3-5 2015. The conference had two themes: hyperbolic and contact structures 
on low dimensional manifolds, in particular knot complements.
The main speakers were Ken Baker (University of Miami), John Etnyre (Georgia Tech),
Dave Futer (Temple University), Matt Hedden (Michigan State University),
Efstratia Kalfagianni (Michigan State University), Emmy Murphy (MIT), Sinem
Onaran (Hacettepe University), Jessica Purcell (Brigham Young University),
Laura Starkson (University of Texas at Austin), and Andy Wand (University of 
Nantes). There was also a graduate student workshop, featuring introductory talks
by Etnyre and Kalfagianni, and graduate student talks by Julia Bennett (University
of Texas at Austin), Stephan Burton (Michigan State University), Christine Lee 
(Michigan State University), Christian Millichap (Temple University), and 
Katherine Vance (Rice University).

The Fall 2015 Redbud Topology Conference was held at the University of
Arkansas, October 3 2015. This meeting covered a broader range of topics
in geometric group theory and geometric topology, and to a certain extent
featured the work of researchers from the Arkansas-Oklahoma region. The
speakers were Corey Bregman (Rice University), Andy Eisenberg (Oklahoma 
State University), Chaim Goodman-Strauss (University of Arkansas),
Susan Hermiller (University of Nebraska), Justin Malestein (University of 
Oklahoma), and Jeffrey Meyer (University of Oklahoma).

The two conferences are part of an ongoing series of conferences in
geometry and topology which are held at institutions in Arkansas and
Oklahoma. 

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