Special meeting: The Cornell Topology Festival

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This grant will support The Cornell Topology Festival for the next three years, starting in Spring 2009. The Festival has been a strong force in the mathematical life of topologists and geometers in the northeastern United States for the past 45 years, providing a significant arena for the development and dissemination of a broad array of results from within the areas of algebraic, differential, and geometric topology and allied subjects. Each year approximately one-third of the talks will be in a particular area of emphasis. Recent examples are algebraic topology and its applications (2006), low-dimensional topology and group theory (2007), and symplectic geometry and topology (2008). Each year's Festival will include two introductory workshops in the area of emphasis, to provide a point of entry for interested non-experts and a sense of involvement for all participants. It will also include a broad-ranging panel discussion by the invited speakers, to provide a forward-looking perspective on new developments not covered in the talks.The broader impacts of the Festival include (a) a more broadly-trained community of topologists, able to transcend the boundaries of sub-specialties; (b) a more diverse mathematical workforce; (c) a more rapid integration of younger topologists into areas of current research; and (d) the enhancement of collaboration among researchers in different areas of topology. There is an outreach and support program to encourage the participation of underrepresented groups and young researchers. The training effects of the Festival will be extended by dissemination of lecture notes from the workshops and a summary of the panel discussion; the main vehicle for this is the Festival web site, which has been maintained continuously since 1997.