Conference on Applications of Geometry to Topology and Physics, November 2008, Newark, NJ

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A conference on the Applications of Geometry to Topology and Physics will be held November 7-9, 2008 at Rutgers-Newark University. Speakers including Thomas Banchoff, Robert Connelly, Dennis DeTurck, David Gabai, Weiqing Gu, Blaine Lawson, David Singer, Dennis Sullivan, and Gang Tian will gather to address two topics in the application of geometry to other fields. The first topic is calibrated geometry and its applications to physics, including calibrated cycles and mirror symmetry, calibrated geometry and gauge theory, and moduli spaces of calibrated cycles. The second topic is the application of geometry to knot theory, including the study of geometric functionals and flows on knots such as Freedman's Mobius energy and Nabutovsky's ropelength. A conference on the Applications of Geometry to Topology and Physics will be held November 7-9, 2008 at Rutgers-Newark University. This conference will bring together mathematicians working in geometry to address two applications of the subject. The first is calibrated geometry, a structure which is often utilized in solving optimization problems in geometry, and which has numerous physical applications. First studied in the 1930's, calibrated geometry has garnered renewed interest in the past decade for its connection to topics in modern physics, such as mirror symmetry. The second conference topic is the application of geometry to the mathematical study of knots, which provides a deep understanding of three-dimensional objects and their topology. Geometric ideas in knot theory have enabled applications to fluid dynamics and plasma physics. Our second topic seeks to connect these advances in knot theory with other more traditional applications of geometry in topology in order to foster an exchange of ideas and techniques with the broader geometry community.