^{Mathematical travel}

Some other conferences from years past. See the main page for recent meetings.

Hyperplane Arrangements, Wonderful Compactifications, and Tropicalization: I had the good fortune to spend a week at the Banff International Research Station,in April, 2014, to take part in a Focused Research Group with the title above, click here. Besides me there were Graham Denham, Eva-Maria Feichtner, Alex Fink, June Huh, Eric Katz, and Alex Suciu.We had a fun time, and I learned what I needed to prove an old folklore conjecture about Milnor fibers,first stated in print thirty years ago by, well, me.

Two meetings in Romania: In June of 2014, I traveled to Romania, spending one night in Bucharest, then a week in Eforie Nord, near Constanta on the Black Sea, attending a conference called Experimental and theoretical Methods in Algebraic Topology and Geometry (the link to the web page is non-functional), followed by two days of driving across the country, with a night in Moieciu de Sos in the Carpathians, followed by a week in Alba Iulia and an interntational AMS meeting, click here. I took the opportunity to stop in Dublin on my way home, for a week of work with my co-authors Tom Brady and Colum Watt, a couple of old-time sessions at the Cobblestone with my friends Bill Whelan and Maeve Toner, followed by a week on the Beara peninsula in the southwest of Ireland with Darcy, including a nice session in the lovely town of Allihies, hosted by Ackie and Pat.

Hyperplane Arrangements: Combinatorial and Geometric Aspects, in Bochum: In February, 2013, I travelled to Germany for a small meeting organized by Gerhard Roehrle and Torsten Hoge in Bochum, Germany, in the Ruhr Valley. Here is the conference web page: click, and here is the cool poster: click.

Arrangements and Configuration Spaces, in Bremen: While I was visiting Eva-Maria Feichtner in Bremen I co-organized with Eva and Dmitry Feichtner-Kozlov a small 3-day workshop on arrangements, May 22-24, 2012. Here is a link to the conference web page: click here. It was a lot of fun to have my friends Tom Brady, David Mond, Mario Salvetti, Alex Suciu, and Graham Denham (and many others) there.

Arrangements in Pyrénées: I travelled from Bremen to Pau, France, to attend and give a talk in a summer school on arrangements hosted by Daniele Faenzi, Jean Valles, and Vincent Florens of Université de Pau. Pau is the "Gateway to the Pyrenees" in southwest France, between Bordeaux and Toulouse. Here is a link to the conference web page: click here. I had a great time there.

Hyperplane Arrangements and Applications  I was one of the organizers of a conference in honor of Hiroaki Terao, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. The meeting took place at Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), at UBC in Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 8 - 12, 2011. Here is a link to the conference web page: click.

Configuration Spaces: Geometry, Combinatorics and Topology  I spent six weeks living in Pisa, Italy, this summer, participating in the two-month intensive research period Configuration Spaces: Algebra, Combinatorics, and Topology at the Centro di Ricerca Matematica Ennio De Giorgi. It was fun and very productive. Besides my trip to Trieste (see below), I visited Lucca, San Miniato, Tuscania, Viterbo, Rome, and La Cinque Terre. I put some of my pictures up on my Wife's Picasa page - here's the link: snapshots of Italy.

Summer School on Hodge Theory and Related Topics While I was in Italy, I travelled across the country to Trieste, to attend the first week of a three-week summer school on Hodge Theory at ICTP (International Center for Theoretical Physics). It was lots of fun hanging with soccer fans during the World Cup, and I learned a bunch of algebraic geometry and Hodge theory.

MSJ Seasonal Institute on Arrangements of Hyperplanes  This large conference, sponsored by the Mathematical Society of Japan, took place August 1-9, 2009, in Sapporo, Japan.

Lib60ber: Topology of Algebraic Varieties In June, 2009, I had the good fortune to attend this birthday conference for old friend Anatoly Libgober, held in Jaca, Spain, in the central Pyrenees. We had a wonderful time there.

Moab Topology Conference In May, 2009,I went to this three-day conference in Moab - for once, a topology conference I could drive to! A very nice conference - I hope they do it again. Got to see Arches and Canyonlands (north) while I was there (stunning), not to mention Potash. (I went there to see the spot where my friend Bill composed his little fiddle tune of the same name.)

Conference in honour of Peter Orlik  My doctoral advisor, Peter Orlik, retired from teaching in 2007. This conference is to honor him and celebrate his career. I'm proud to be taking part - it's not often one has the opportunity to say thank you to one's teachers, with the benfit of hindsight. It took place August 19-22, 2008, at the Fields Institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

CIMPA Summer School on Arrangement, Local Sysytems, and Singularities I lectured in this summer school in Istanbul, Turkey, in June, 2007. The sponsor, Centre International Mathematiques Pures et Appliquees, sponsors conferences and summer schools especially for mathematicians and students from the developing world, using funding mainly from the French government and UNESCO. There were many students and mathematicians in this school from Turkey and Pakistan, and a few from Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, Brazil. I got a refresher course in singularity theory, and also had some time with colleagues to discuss some research. We also had a few adventures (e.g., after 24 hours of travel, I wore my travelling clothes for four more days while BA dug my luggage out of some basement at Heathrow), and I further developed my taste for the traditional music of the Balkans. I had lots of fun playing tunes with my new friend, singularity-theorist/flautist David Mond. It was a unique and very interesting experience. Here is a page of photographs, and here's a bunch more.

Oberwolfach Mini-workshop on Topology of Closed 1-forms and Cohomology Jumping Loci I attended this workshop in August, 2007, at the mathematical research institute in Oberwolfach, Germany. This is one of my favorite places on the face of the earth. I gave a 60-minute talk, and participated in a very stimulating week of discussions. I learned something about robotics and topological complexity.

Recent Developments in Arrangements and Configuration Spaces a.k.a. the Yuz-Fest. I co-organized a workshop at MSRI in August 2006, in honor of my esteemed colleague Sergey Yuzvinsky's 70 th birthday.

Hyperplane Arrangements and Applications - I was one of the organizers for the semester-long program at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, Fall of 2004. Here is a web page describing the program. I was also an organizer and lecturer in a related two-week summer school for graduate students in Eugene in early August. Here's a page describing my East Bay adventure.

Arrangements of Hyperplanes - Algebra, Combinatorics, Geometry, Topology In May, 2005, I travelled to the south of Switzerland for a large arrangements meeting. I gave a talk about multinets, and worked with my co-authors on an ongoing project. Here's the web page - check out the list of participants and you'll see what "large" means.

Geometry and Combinatorics in Arizona I co-organized a special session called "Geometry and Combinatorics" at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Phoenix in January, 2004, and hosted a workshop at NAU in Flagstaff, also called "Geometry and Combinatorics," preceding the meeting. Here is the webpage for both conferences.

Oberwolfach Mini-workshop on Combinatorial Stratifications in Topology and Geometry. In November, 2003, I visited the wonderful mathematical research institute in Oberwolfach, Germany, ("the garden of Eden for mathematicians") for a one-week mini-workshop. Here's the meeting page from a previous visit, in March, 2002, for the Oberwolfach Mini-workshop on Cohomology Jumping Loci. You can read the final report and look at the picture of the thirteen participants standing on the library steps. (Front row: Eva-Maria Feichtner (Zurich), Alex Suciu (Boston), Boris Shapiro (Stockholm), Hiroaki Terao (Tokyo); Second row: Jose Cogolludo (Madrid), Michael Shapiro (East Lansing), yours truly, Hal Schenck (College Station); Third row: Alex Dimca (Bordeaux), Sergey Yuzvinsky (Eugene), Danny Matei (Rochester), Graham Denham (London, Ontario), Dan Cohen (Baton Rouge). This was a really great conference!

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