Conference: Ventotene International Workshops VI, GRAZP: Groups and Rigidity Around the Zimmer Program

This project supports participation of US based mathematicians in the workshop "GRAZP: Groups and Rigidity Around the Zimmer Program" which will take place from September 11-16, 2023 in Ventotene, Italy. In light of the recent major advances in the Zimmer program, the main goal of the conference is to have a timely meeting of researchers to educate participants on these advances and discuss new directions. The conference will help educate junior mathematicians about these advances and help bring them to the forefront of this active research area. The workshop will consist of three minicourses on different aspects of Groups and Rigidity Around the Zimmer Program, together with research talks, a lightning talks session for grad students, some discussion sessions and plenty of time for informal discussions. Participants will include leading U.S. and European researchers from the different areas related to the centerpiece of the workshop, as well as younger researchers, both graduate students and postdocs. The lecture series will provide an opportunity for the researchers to educate each other and the workshop participants about techniques and recent advances in the area. By the end of the workshop we expect the participants to be able to draw enough parallels between the different techniques to be able to put them to use and open new directions of research stemming from the interaction among the topics. The conference will help to educate graduate students and recent PhDs on the latest developments in the field and bring them to the forefront of research. The majority of funding will support junior participants coming from the USA. The organizing committee will encourage and support broad and diverse participation. In particular, women mathematicians and members of other under-represented groups are especially encouraged to apply for support. The workshop include the following three minicourses on topics related to recent advances in the Zimmer program: 1) An update on the current state of the Zimmer program (David Fisher, Rice University), 2) Actions of lattices on geometric and Furstenberg boundaries (Thang Nguyen, Florida State University) and 3) Centralizer rigidity (Amie Wilkinson, University of Chicago). The workshop will also feature research talks and informal discussions and a lightning talk session for junior researchers. Participants will include leading U.S. and European researchers from different areas relevant to the centerpiece of the workshop as well as junior researchers, both graduate students and postdocs. The website for the workshop may be found at https://www.ventoteneinternationalworkshops.net/. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.