Workshop on Geometric Group Theory

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This award supports US invited speakers and US junior researchers attending the "Workshop on Geometric Group Theory", to be held August 9-14, 2010 at Goa University in India. This will be a satellite conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). The workshop will feature a variety of topics which exemplify the central theme of the field, that of approaching group theoretic questions by treating groups as geometric objects. There will be mini-courses on lattices in Lie groups, CAT(0) groups and Out(Fn), which will be aimed at graduate students and researchers new to the field. In addition, there will be about 17 invited research talks in these as well as closely related areas, such as mapping class groups, limit groups, relatively hyperbolic groups and quasi-isometric rigidity.Geometric group theory is a relatively new field which has been flourishing in recent years. Questions and techniques in geometric group theory come from a startling range of sources: combinatorial group theory, three-manifolds, Riemannian geometry, logic, and algebraic geometry are just a few examples. The interdisciplinary aspect of the field has given rise to a rich theory. This workshop will create a stimulating forum for generating new ideas, by bringing together a variety of participants: leading specialists, junior researchers, and researchers from fields that are related, but not traditionally a part of geometric group theory. This is expected to be mutually beneficial: the sharing of techniques, tools and ideas from different backgrounds is likely to lead to interesting new avenues of research. Further, it will have a positive impact on international collaborations. The workshop will also seek to attract good mathematicians to geometric group theory by providing a well-rounded picture of the current state of research in the field. This will be done through mini-courses which focus on key examples and motivating ideas, and through invited research talks. There will also be short contributed talks, which will provide a platform for young mathematicians to present their research.