CAIMS/SCMAI Electronic Newsletter Volume 01 Number 2

CONTENTS

1. Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation
and Discovery (BIRS)

2. News from the Centre de Recherches Mathematiques

3. Submission Information

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ITEM 1
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From: Anna Lawniczak <alawnicz@fields.utoronto.ca>
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 17:56:16 -0400

Dear Colleagues,

PIMS (Vancouver) and MSRI (Berkeley) have submitted a proposal to
the Canadian and US governments for the creation of the “Banff
International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery
”(BIRS). This is an Oberwolfach/Luminy/Aspen type facility for the
mathematical sciences located in Banff.

They need CAIMS/SCMAI members to help the process by sending
LETTERS (or e-mails) OF SUPPORT as soon as possible to be addressed to:

director@pims.math.ca

or to:

Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences
1933 West Mall,
West Mall Annex
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2

An informative Newsletter and a Call for Proposals are available on the
BIRS webpage where they can be downloaded either as postscript or
pdf files:

http://pims.math.ca/birs/

They are now looking for strong proposals for the year 2003 (March
through December). The 2003 program at BIRS is expected to be vetted
by the BIRS Scientific Advisory Board in December 2001. The deadline
for submission of proposals is October 1, 2001. BIRS is committed
to representing all aspects of the Mathematical Sciences and they look
forward to many exciting proposals from the world-wide community.

All this is subject to funding decisions by The Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the US National
Science Foundation (NSF), and the Alberta Science Research Authority
(ASRA), which are expected before July 2001.

Your letter of support can contribute to the success of BIRS:
The Banff International Research Station for
Mathematical Innovation and Discovery http://www.pims.math.ca/birs

If you have any question contact directly

Nassif Ghoussoub, FRSC
Director, Pacific Institute for the mathematical sciences
http://www.pims.math.ca
Phone: (604) 822-9328 Fax:(604) 822-0883

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ITEM 2
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From: Suzette Paradis <paradis@CRM.UMontreal.CA>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:26:29 -0400

(Editor’s Note: In the interest of brevity, I have deleted some of the details
of the following announcement. These details may be found at the CRM website
World Wide Web: http://www.CRM.UMontreal.CA/geometry)

Groups and Geometry

Thematic programme 2001-2002

CRM, Universite de Montreal

The role of group actions and groups in general is ubiquitous in geometry,
and the year’s programme will concentrate on some areas in which there has
been important recent progress. The year consists of two segments, the
first more differential-geometric in flavour, and the other one concentrating
specifically on the links between algebraic geometry, group theory and
representation theory.

* GROUPS AND LOW-DIMENSIONAL TOPOLOGY
June – July 2001
Organizers: Steven Boyer (UQAM), Dani Wise (Brandeis & McGill)

– Workshop on groups and 3-manifolds
June 25-29, 2001

– Mini-courses
July 2-6, 2001

Michel Boileau (Universite Paul Sabatier) “Geometrisation of 3-dimensional
orbifolds”

Martin Bridson (University of Oxford) “Non-positively curved spaces and
hyperbolic groups”

Ruth Charney (Ohio State University) “The geometry of Coxeter and Artin groups”

Benson Farb (University of Chicago) “A crash course on the geometry of groups”

Peter Shalen (University of Illinois at Chicago) “Representations of 3-manifold
groups”

– Workshop on geometric group theory
July 9-13, 2001

* TOPOLOGY OF MANIFOLDS AND GROUP ACTIONS
August 20-24, 2001
Organizers: Ian Hambleton (McMaster), Ronnie Lee (Yale)

* INFINITE-DIMENSIONAL LIE GROUPS
October – November 2001
Organizers: Niky Kamran (McGill), Boris Khesin (Toronto)

* INTRODUCTORY LECTURES by A.A. Kirillov (Pennsylvania),
October 29 – November 1, 2001

* WORKSHOP ON THE GEOMETRY OF INFINITE-DIMENSIONAL LIE GROUPS
November 2-6, 2001

* GROUPS AND ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY
January – June 2002

– Aisenstadt Chairs
There will be three series of lectures delivered under the auspices of the
Aisenstadt chair, by E. Frenkel (Berkeley), L. Lafforgue (IHES) and
G. Lusztig (MIT).

– Graduate courses
January – April 2002

Abram Broer (Universite de Montreal)
“Hilbert schemes of points and their applications”

Henri Darmon (McGill University)
“Automorphic forms”

Eyal Goren (McGill University)
“Curves, vector bundles on curves and their moduli”

Eyal Goren (McGill University)
“Curves, vector bundles on curves and their moduli”

Yvan Saint-Aubin (Universite de Montreal)
“Kac-Moody algebras”

– Winter school on Computations in Coxeter groups
January 21-28, 2002
Organizers: William Casselman (UBC), Robert Bedard (UQAM), Fokko Du
Cloux (Lyon I)

– Group actions on rational varieties
February 27 – March 3, 2002
Organizer: Peter Russell (McGill)

– Invariant theory
April 8 – April 19, 2002
Organizers: David Wehlau (QueenUs), Eddy Campbell (QueenUs)

– Concentration period on the Langlands programme for function fields
April – May 2002
Organizers: Henri Darmon (McGill), Jacques Hurtubise (CRM)

+ April 2002: Short courses for graduate students on topics including the
classical Hitchin systems,

+ April 30 – May 17, 2002: The Langlands program for function fields. A three
week extended workshop, with the first two weeks devoted to survey lectures
for graduate students.

– Computational Lie theory
May 27 – June 10, 2002
Organizers: William Casselman (UBC), Friedrich Knop (Rutgers)

– Algebraic transformation groups
June 10-15, 2002
Organizers: Abraham Broer (Montreal), Jim Carrell (UBC)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

A. Broer (Montreal
S. Boyer (UQAM)
J. Carrell (UBC)
W. Casselman (UBC)
H. Darmon (McGill)
I. Hambleton (McMaster)
J.Hurtubise (CRM)
N. Kamran (McGill)
B. Khesin (Toronto)
F. Knop (Rutgers)
R. Lee (Yale)
D. Wise (Brandeis & McGill)

Those wishing to participate in the above activities are invited to write to:

Louis Pelletier
Centre de recherches mathematiques (CRM)
Universite de Montreal
C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville
Montreal (Quebec), CANADA H3C3J7

E-mail: ACTIVITES@CRM.UMontreal.CA

World Wide Web: http://www.CRM.UMontreal.CA/geometry

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ITEM 3
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From: Sue Ann Campbell <sacampbell@uwaterloo.ca>
Date: May 14, 2001

The next issue of the CAIMS/SCMAI Electronic Newsletter will come out
in early September 2001. Submission should be sent, in plain text format,
by August 31, 2001 to sacampbell@uwaterloo.ca.

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