Modular Categories and Applications  
Indiana University, Bloomington
March 19-22, 2009  

Modular categories have become ubiquitous in many branches of mathematics and have applications to physics and even quantum computation.   The purpose of this conference is to have a gathering of experts studying modular categories from these diverse points of view to encourage the free flow of ideas.  One goal is to establish the study of modular category theory as a subject in parallel to that of group theory.  This conference is supported by a Focussed Research Group grant from the National Science Foundation and the Mathematics Department of Indiana University.

The conference begins Thursday March 19 in the morning and ends at noon on Sunday.   We plan to have approximately 16 speakers, with ample time for discussions.

Speakers:

• Terry Gannon (Alberta)

• Yi-Zhi Huang (Rutgers)

• Alexei Davydov (Macquarie)

• Alexei Kitaev (Caltech)

• Dmitri Nikshych (New Hampshire)

• Victor Ostrik (Oregon)

• Joanna Kania-Bartoszynska (NSF)

• Michael Müger (Nijmegen)

• Richard Ng (Iowa State)

•  Joost Slingerland (Dublin ITP)

• Nick Read (Yale, Physics)

• Vladimir Turaev (Indiana)

• Hans Wenzl (UC San Diego)

• Feng Xu (UC Riverside)

• Shigeru Yamagami (Ibaraki)

• Scott Morrison (Microsoft) Slides

• Noah Snyder (Berkeley) Slides

Abstracts

Tentative Schedule

NSF support:

Some financial support may be available.  Requests can be made on the electronic registration page below.  

Please register electronically if you plan to attend. The deadline to register and be considered for support (hotel and/or travel) is 19 February, 2009.

Registered Participants

• Restaurants and Coffee: There are many restaurants near the University, with a wide variety of cuisines including: Afghan, Burmese, Indian, Moroccan, Thai, Tibetan and Turkish. Most have fare amenable to vegetarian diets, and one can find a decent cup of coffee in town.

• The weather in Bloomington at this time of year can be quite varied, but on average the high temperature is around 52F (11C) and a low of 32F (0C).  Depending on the weather we may plan a hike.

Reserved Accommodations:

• We plan to reserve a block of rooms in the Indiana Memorial Union.

Other Accommodations:

• Coming soon.

Location and Directions:

The mathematics department is housed in Rawles Hall, the building just west of the intersection of 3rd Street and Woodlawn Avenue on the north side of 3rd Street.

• The red pin on this map indicates the intersection of 3rd Street and Woodlawn Avenue.
  

• Detailed information on travel by plane and car.
  

• Maps of campus in interactive html and in pdf.

The talks will be in Swain Hall East, room 140.  The location of buildings can be found by selecting them on the campus map.

Contact Information:

Please contact one of the organizers with any questions:

• Eric Rowell rowell@math.tamu.edu
• Zhenghan Wang zhenghwa@microsoft.com
• Michael Larsen larsen@iu-math.math.indiana.edu