Conference:Upper Midwest Commutative Algebra Colloquium; University of Wisconsin; November 14, 2015; and University of Minnesota - April, 2016

This grant will fund conferences at the University of Wisconsin on November 14, 2015, and at the University of Minnesota in April 2016 (date to be announced). These one-day meetings will bring together faculty and students from the two universities, as well as from nearby collegiate institutions, to discuss topics in and around commutative algebra. Commutative algebra concerns the qualitative study of systems of polynomial equations in several unknowns, which play an important role in many areas of science and engineering. Besides promoting scientific discovery and dissemination, the conferences seek to build a stronger regional community of researchers and promote the training and education of graduate students. More information about the meetings can be found here: http://www.math.wisc.edu/~derman/UMW.html

Each meeting will consist of two plenary talks by invited speakers from around the country, followed by an expository talk on a cutting edge topic, presented by a local speaker. While a majority of the faculty in commutative algebra at the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin are relatively junior, both institutions have broad and deep communities of researchers whose work interacts with commutative algebra, but who primarily work in other fields, including algebraic geometry, combinatorics, number theory, applied algebra, representation theory, and computational algebra. Thus these conferences are well positioned to lead to collaborations across different areas of algebra. Attendees will consist of a mix of professors, postdoctoral researchers, and students from the two hosting institutions plus other nearby institutions.