Lewis Bowen
Associate Professor

• Office: Milner 119
  
• Phone: 979 845 7814
• Mail: Math. Dept.
  Mailstop 3368
  Texas A&M University
  College Station, TX
  77843-3368
• email: lpbowen (at) math.tamu.edu
  

Education

• Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin, 2002.
• B.S. with Honors in Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin, 1997.
  

In the Profession

• 2011-present, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Texas A&M.
• 2009-2011, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Texas A&M.
• 2007-2009, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of Hawai'i.
• Summer 2007, Visiting Professor of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin.
• Fall 2004-Spring 2007, Zorn Postdoctoral Fellow, Indiana University.
• Fall 2002-Spring 2004, VIGRE Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Davis.
• Summer 2001, Assistant Instructor, University of Texas at Austin.
  

Research or Scholarly Interests

My research is in the ergodic theory of non-amenable group actions and in geometric group theory.

Major Awards

• Spring 2002, Frank Gerth III Dissertation Award.
  
• Fall 1999 - Spring 2000, Livingston Fellowship.
  
• Fall 1997 - Spring 1998, John L. and Anne Crawford Endowed Presidential Scholarship Recipient.
  

Notable Recent Grants

• BSF Grant #2008274, Ergodic theory beyond amenable groups, co-PI, Sept 2009 to Aug 2013. $52,000.
  
• NSF Grant DMS--0968762, Ergodic theory of non-amenable group actions, PI, Sept 2009 to Aug 2012. $170,760.
  
• NSF CAREER Grant DMS--0954606, CAREER: Ergodic theory of non-amenable group actions, PI, May 2010 to May 2015. $499,993.
  

Publications

1. Lewis Bowen, Circle Packing in Hyperbolic Space, Math. Phys. Electron. J. 6 (2000), Paper 6, 10 pp. (electronic).
2. Lewis Bowen, Periodicity and Circle Packing in the Hyperbolic Plane, Geom. Dedicata 102 (2003), 213--236.
3. Lewis Bowen, On the existence of completely saturated packings and completely reduced coverings, Geom. Dedicata 98 (2003), 211--226.
4. Lewis Bowen and Charles Radin, Densest Packing of Equal Spheres in Hyperbolic Space, Discrete Comput. Geom. 29 (2003), no. 1, 23--39.  
5. Lewis Bowen, Couplings of Uniform Spanning Forests, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 132 (2004), no. 7, 2151--2158.
6. Lewis Bowen and Charles Radin, Optimally Dense Packings of Hyperbolic Space, Geom. Dedicata 104 (2004), 37--59.
7. Lewis Bowen, Charles Holton, Charles Radin and Lorenzo Sadun, Uniqueness and symmetry in problems of optimally dense packings, Math. Phys. Electron. J. 11 (2005), Paper 1, 34 pp.
8. Lewis Bowen, Mike Develin, Jesus De Loera and Francisco Santos, On the Gromov Norm of the Product of Two Surfaces, Topology 44 (2005), no. 2, 321--339. erratum: Topology 47 (2008), no. 6, 471--472.
9. Lewis Bowen, Russell Lyons, Charles Radin and Peter Winkler, A Solidification Phenomenon in Random Packings, SIAM J. Math. Anal. 38 (2006), no. 4, 1075--1089.
   
10. Lewis Bowen, Russell Lyons, Charles Radin and Peter Winkler, Fluid/Solid Transition in a Hard-Core System, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 025701 (2006).
11. Lewis Bowen, A generalization of the prime geodesic theorem to counting conjugacy classes of free subgroups. Geom. Dedicata, 124, (2007), 37--67.
12. Lewis Bowen, Free groups in lattices, Geometry & Topology, 13, (2009), 3021--3054.
13. Lewis Bowen, Nonabelian free group actions: Markov processes, the Abramov-Rohlin formula and Yuzvinskii's formula,  Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 30 (2010), no. 6, 1629--1663.
14. Lewis Bowen, The ergodic theory of free group actions: entropy and the f-invariant. Groups Geom. Dyn. 4 (2010), no. 3, 419--432
15. Lewis Bowen, A new measure conjugacy invariant for actions of free groups, Ann. of Math., vol. 171 (2010), No. 2, 1387--1400.
16. Lewis Bowen, Measure conjugacy invariants for actions of countable sofic groups,  J. Amer. Math. Soc., 23 (2010), 217-245.
17. Lewis Bowen, Invariant measures on the space of horofunctions of a word hyperbolic group, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems. 30 (2010), no. 1, 97--129.
18. Lewis Bowen, Entropy for expansive algebraic actions of residually finite groups, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems. 31 (2011), no. 3, 703--718.
19. Lewis Bowen, Weak isomorphisms between Bernoulli shifts, Israel J. of Math, (2011) Volume 183, Number 1, 93-102.
20. Lewis Bowen, Orbit equivalence, coinduced actions and free products, Groups Geom. Dyn. 5 (2011), no. 1, 1–15.
21. Lewis Bowen, Stable orbit equivalence of Bernoulli shifts over free groups, Groups Geom. Dyn. 5 (2011), no. 1, 17–38.

Papers Accepted

• Lewis Bowen, Sofic entropy and amenable groups, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems, (45 pages).
• Lewis Bowen, Every countably infinite group is almost Ornstein, special edition of Contemporary Mathematics, (15 pages).
• Lewis Bowen and Robin Tucker-Drob, On a co-induction question of Kechris, Israel J. of Math., (15 pages).
• Lewis Bowen and Amos Nevo, Pointwise ergodic theorems beyond amenable groups, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems, (49 pages).

Papers Submitted

• Lewis Bowen and Hanfeng Li, Harmonic models and spanning forests of residually finite groups, (42 pages).
• Lewis Bowen and Yonatan Gutman, A Juzvinskiĭ Addition Theorem for Finitely Generated Free Group Actions, (20 pages).
• Lewis Bowen and Yonatan Gutman, Corrigendum to "Nonabelian free group actions: Markov processes, the Abramov-Rohlin formula and Yuzvinskii's formula", (6 pages).
  
• Lewis Bowen and Amos Nevo, Geometric covering arguments and ergodic theorems for free groups, (24 pages).
• Lewis Bowen, Random walks on coset spaces with applications to Furstenberg entropy, (26 pages).
• Lewis Bowen, Invariant random subgroups of the free group, (19 pages).
  

Recent Synergistic Activities

• Co-editor of a special volume of Contemporary Mathematics in honor of A. M. Stepin, to appear in 2012.
• Co-organizer of "Groups, Geometry and Random Structures" a workshop held in March 2012 at Texas A&M University.
• Teaching Committee Member, Fall 2011-present.
  
• Co-organizer of a special session on Dynamical Systems and Operator Algebras at the 2011 Fall Central Section Meeting of the AMS at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• Invited speaker at MCTP (Mentoring through critical transition points), July 2011.
• Invited speaker at Texas A&M Undergraduate Math Club, April 2011.
  
• Co-organizer of "Group actions on measure spaces" a workshop held in March 2011 at Texas A&M University.
• Keynote speaker at Aggieland Saturday, Feb 2011.
• Invited speaker at MCTP (Mentoring through critical transition points), July 2010.
• Co-organizer of "Workshop on Groups, Embeddings and Applications", March 2009 at the University of Hawai'i.
• Co-organizer, Undergraduate seminar, 2007-2009 at the University of Hawai'i.
  
• Mentored two undergraduates as part of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at Indiana University during the summer of 2006.
  

• Group Theory International Webinar, May 2012.
  
• Laminations and Symbolic Dynamics, 3 talks, CIRM, Luminy, France, March 2012.
  
• Workshop on Invariant Random Subgroups in Sde-Boker, Israel, 2 talks, Februrary-March 2012.
  
• Rice University Colloquium, October 2011.
  
• 2011 Fall Central AMS Meeting, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Invited address, October 2011.
  
• ``Groups, graphs and stochastic processes'', BIRS, June 2011.
  
• Workshop on II_1 factors: rigidity, symmetries and classification, IHP, May 2011.
  
• ``Finite-dimensional approximations to discrete groups'', Oberwolfach, May 2011.
  
• Trends in Dynamics, Northwestern University, April 2011.
• Dynamics seminar, University of Houston, April 2011.
  
• ``Workshop on Concentration Phenomenon, Transformation Groups and Ramsey Theory'', Fields Institute, Oct 12-15, 2010.
• Topology Seminar, UT Austin, Sept 27, 2010.
• ``Workshop on Geometric, Asymptotic and Combinatorial Group Theory with Applications'', Centre de recherches mathematiques, Aug 15-19, 2010.
• Midwest Dynamics, University of Illinois, Chicago, Nov 6-8, 2009.
• Group Theory Seminar, UIUC, Nov 2009.
  
• Princeton Colloquium, Oct 2009.
• 3 talks at the Center for Dynamics and Geometry seminar, PSU, Oct 2009.
• East Coast Operator Algebras Symposium, Texas A&M, Oct 24-25 2009.
• Informal Regional Functional Analysis Seminar, Texas A&M, Aug 7-9 2009.
• 2nd Pingree Dynamics Workshop, Pingree Park, Aug 3-8 2009.
• Dynamical Systems and Randomness, Institut Henri Poincare, May 11-15 2009.
• Residually finite groups, graph limits and dynamics, Banff International Research Station, Apr 12-19, 2009.
• Probability seminar, University of Washington, April 2009.
  
• Rice University Colloquium, Feb 2009.
• UT Austin Colloquium, Feb 2009.
• U. of Houston Colloquium, Feb 2009.

Recent Graduate Students and/or Postdocs

• Sukhpreet Singh.
  

Teaching Experience