Conference: Contemporary Combinatorics 2012

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The 2012 Contemporary Combinatorics conference will be held on the 17th and 18th of May at the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee. The Institute of Combinatorics at the University of Memphis will again host the event in honor of Paul Erdos's past work and relationship with the founding members of the Institute. In bringing together a group of accomplished researchers loosely connected to Combinatorics, the PI hopes to continue to extend the rare opportunity to interactively experience the power and richness of mathematical inquiry to the Mid South community and surrounding areas. This region now has access to a high class conference, much like those which are plentiful (and expensive) on the East Coast or the Bay Area on the West Coast. The formula whereby personal contacts between the lecturers and the other participants is greatly encouraged has been very successful will continue to be an important element of the 2012 meeting. This year's conference features three major segments: The foundational lecture about the Paul Erdos and his work, two Paul Erdos Lectures, and a Combinatorics Conference with excellent invited speakers.The aim of this conference is to bring together a group of outstanding mathematicians who work on topics related to combinatorics, understood in the widest sense. There will be two main speakers: Vaughan Jones and Avi Wigderson. Jones is a distinguished professor of mathematics at Vanderbilt University who is best known for his work on von Neumann algebras, knot polynomials and conformal field theory, in particular, for the 'Jones polynomial' of a knot. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1990. Jones will give a talk on the connection between combinatorics and knot theory. The second major speaker, Wigderson, is not only an excellent pure mathematician, but also one of the best practitioners of theoretical computer science. Wigderson received the Nevanlinna Prize in 1994 for his work on computational complexity. He will give a lecture on the intimate connection between combinatorics and theoretical computer science. The speakers at this conference have been chosen because they are excellent mathematicians, enjoyable lecturers, and very approachable people. In addition to Jones and Wigderson, the speakers include Maria Chudnovsky, Henry Cohn, Eyal Lubetsky, Alan Frieze, and Jacob Fox. The audience will be composed of people from a variety of backgrounds with varying levels of expertise: postdocs, graduate students to senior level academics, and industry researchers from all over the world.