INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

on

will be held on

at the

The conference will be devoted to current developments in geometric and combinatorial group theory. While the scope of the conference is intended to be broad, there will be an emphasis on developments in the theory of automorphisms of free groups in recent years.

Organizers: Arye Juhasz and Michah Sageev

For further information:
Sylvia Schur (Secretary)
Department of Mathematics
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
32000 Haifa, Israel

PROGRAM

Tuesday, June 13
08:30-09:45    Registration

Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:45-10:00    Greetings and Opening remarks

10:00-10:50    Karen Vogtmann (Ithaca, New York)
                     Automorphisms of Free Groups and Outer Space (survey)

11:00-11:50    Zlil Sela (Jerusalem, Israel)
                     Diophantine Geometry over Groups
11:50-12:10   

12:10-13:00    Paul Schupp (Urbana, Illinois)
                     Computational Complexity and the Membership Problem

Afternoon sessions

Parallel session 1
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Sylvia Benvenuti (Dijon, France)
                     Complex of Curves and Presentations of the Mapping Class Group of a Surface

15:10-15:40    Tullio Ceccherini-Silberstein (Rome, Italy)
                     Paradoxical Decompositions of Free Burnside Groups
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Daniel Piollet (Paris, France)
                     Mapping Class and Transvection Groups

16:50-17:20    Thomas Brady  (Dublin, Ireland)
                     Artin Groups of Finite Type

Parallel session 2
Room 231 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Rita Gitik (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
                     Algorithmic Problems in Negatively Curved Groups

15:10-15:40    Richard Thomas (Leicester, England)
                     Groups and Formal Languages
15:40-16:10    

16:10-16:40    Susan Hermiller (Lincoln, Nebraska)
                     Finite Derivation Type

16:50-17:20    Sarah Rees (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, U.K.)
                     Solving the Word Problem in Real Time

Parallel session 3
Room 232 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Tatiana Smirnova-Nagnibeda (Stockholm, Sweden)
                     To be announced

15:10-15:40    Dhmhtrios Varsos (Athens, Greece)
                     Finiteness Conditions of Certain HNN Extensions
15:40-16:10    

16:10-16:40     Evangelos Raptis (Athens, Greece)
                     Subgroup Separable HNN-Extensions of Abelian Groups

16:50-17:20    Amnon Rosenmann (Tel Aviv, Israel )
                     On the Rank of Roots and Equations in Free Groups

17:30             Informal reception

Wednesday, June 14
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Gilbert Levitt (Toulouse, France)
                     On the Dynamics of Automorphisms of Free Groups

10:00-10:50    Daan Krammer (Basel, Switzerland)
                     Braid Groups are Linear
10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    Stephen Bigelow (Berkeley, California)
                     Braid Groups are Linear

Afternoon sessions

Parallel session 1
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Debra Boutin (Clinton, New York)
                     Realizing Finite Groups in Euclidean Space

15:10-15:40    Matthew Zinno (New York)
                     Braid Group Linearity and the BMW Algebra
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Marta Rampichini (Milan, Italy)
                     Fibred Closed Braids

16:50-17:20    Joan Birman (New York)
                     The Infimum, Supremum and Geodesic Length of a Braid Conjugacy Class           

Parallel session 2
Room 231 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Jose Burillo (Barcelona, Spain)
                     Density of Coprime and Primitive Elements in Free Groups

15:10-15:40    Gerhard Rosenberger (Dortmund, Germany)
                     Tame Almost Primitive Elements
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Vladimir Shpilrain (New York)
                     Whitehead's Algorithm Revised

16:50-17:20    Ted Turner (Albany, New York) 
                     Test Elements in Groups and on their Boundaries

Parallel session 3
Room 232 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Georgios Tsapogas (Samos, Greece)
                     Approximation of Recurrence in Negatively Curved Metric Spaces

15:10-15:40    Gabriel Rosenberg (New York)
                      Infinite Towers of Uniform Tree Lattices
15:40-16:10    

16:10-16:40    Claas Roever (Geneva, Switzerland)
                      Commensurator Groups of Branch Groups

16:50-17:20    Michel Coornaert (Strasbourg, France)
                     Stable Exponents in Discrete Groups

Thursday, June 15
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Mark Feighn (Newark, New Jersey)
                     The Topology at Infinity of Out(F_n)

10:00-10:50    Martin Dunwoody (Southampton, England)
                     Algorithms for Finding Splittings of Finitely Presented Groups
10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    Michael Davis (Columbus, Ohio)
                     Vanishing Theorems and Conjectures for the L²-Homology of Right-Angled Coxeter Groups

Afternoon sessions

Parallel session 1
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Martin Edjvet (Nottingham, England)
                     Cyclic Presentations of the Trivial Group

15:10-15:40    Hamish Short (Marseille, France )
                     Subgroups of Direct Products of Free Groups
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Jim Howie (Edinburgh, Scotland)
                     Killing Free Products of Groups

16:50-17:20    Donald Collins (London, England)
                     Intersections of Magnus Subgroups of One Relator Groups

Parallel session 2
Room 232 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    David Epstein (Coventry, England)
                     Hyperbolic Convex Hulls and a Conjecture in Complex Analysis

15:10-15:40    Roger Fenn (Brighton, England)
                     Recent Advances in the Theory of Racks
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Robert Brooks (Haifa, Israel)
                    Trivalent Graphs and Random Riemann Surfaces

16:50-17:20    Kanta  Gupta (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
                     Some Recent Developments in the Finite Basis Problem

Parallel session 3
Room 233 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Jon McCammond (College Station, Texas)
                     The Curvature of Posets Associated to the Braid Groups

15:10-15:40    Kai-Uwe Bux (Salt Lake City, Utah)
                     Orbit Spaces of Subgroup Complexes and Combinatorial Morse Theory
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Kim Ruane (Zurich, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts)
                     Local Connectivity of Boundaries and Splittings of Groups

16:50-17:20    Michael Mihalik (Nashville, Tennessee)
                     Visual Decompositions of Coxeter Groups

Friday, June 16
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Martin Bridson (Oxford, England)
                      Aspects of Rigidity for Out(F_n)

10:00-10:50    Ruth Charney (Columbus, Ohio )
                     Automorphism Groups of Coxeter Groups

10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    Peter Shalen (Chicago, Illinois)
                     Smallish Knots in 3-Manifolds

13:00             Weekend Excursion to the Galilee and Golan Heights

Sunday, June 18
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Stuart Margolis (Ramat Gan, Israel)
                     Inverse Semigroup Theoretic Methods in Combinatorial and Geometric Group Theory

10:00-10:50    Michael Handel (Chicago, Illinois)
                     Abelian Subgroups of Out(F_n)
10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    John Crisp (Dijon, France and Southhampton, England)
                     The Tits Conjecture for Artin Groups, Solved

Afternoon sessions                      

Parallel session 1
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Sean Cleary (New York)
                     Rotation Distance and Thompson's Group F

15:10-15:40    Noel Brady (Norman, Oklahoma)
                     On Dimensions of CAT(0) and CAT(-1) Complexes with the Same Hyperbolic Group Action

15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Inna Bumagina (Jerusalem, Israel )
                      Subgroups of Torsion Free Hyperbolic Groups are Hopf

16:50-17:20    Christophe Pittet (Toulouse, France)
                     Isoperimetric Inequalities for Lattices

Parallel session 2
Room 232 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Saar Hersonsky (Beer-Sheva, Israel)
                    Diophantine Approximation in Negatively Curved Manifolds

15:10-15:40    Elena Klimenko (Haifa, Israel)
                     Two-Generator Hyperbolic Orbifolds with Real Parameters
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Jens Harlander (Frankfurt, Germany)
                     Singular 3-Manifolds and Asphericity of Certain Ribbon Disc Complements

16:50-17:20    Andrzej Zuk (Lyon, France)
                     To be announced

Parallel session 3
Room 815 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Grzegorz Gromadzki (Gdansk, Poland)
                      Conjugacy Classes of Involutions in $2$-Groups

15:10-15:40    Waldemar Holubowski (Gliwice, Poland)
                     Subgroups of Infinite Dimensional Linear Groups Containing a Fixed Subgroup
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Daniela Nikolova (Sofia, Bulgaria)
                     Matrix Equations

16:50-17:20    Andrew Harkins (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, U.K.)
                     Polycyclic Subgroups of Automatic Groups are Virtually Abelian

Monday, June 19
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Lee Mosher (Newark, New Jersey)
                     On the Geometry of Hyperbolic-by-Free Groups

10:00-10:50    Martin Lustig (Marseille, France)
                     Conjugacy and Dynamics of Free Group Automorphisms
10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    Alex Lubotzky (Jerusalem, Israel)
                     Generating Random Elements in Finite Groups, Kazhdan Property T and Automorphism Groups of Free Groups

Afternoon sessions

Parallel session 1
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Oleg Bogopolski (Novosibirsk, Russia)
                     Classification of Automorphisms of the Free Group of Rank 2 by Ranks of Fixed-Point Subgroups

15:10-15:40    Vincent Guirardel (Grenoble, France)
                     Measures on Trees and Dynamics of Out(F_n) on the Boundary of Outerspace
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    To be announced

16:50-17:20    Enric Ventura (Barcelona, Spain)
                     On Automorphism-Fixed Subgroups of a Free Group

Parallel session 2
Room 232 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Ross Geoghegan (Binghamton, New York) 
                     SL₂ Groups Acting on the Hyperbolic Plane

15:10-15:40    Olympia Talelli (Athens, Greece)
                     On Complete Resolutions
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Robert Shwartz (Edinburgh, Scotland)
                     One-Relator Free Products

16:50-17:20    Seymour Bachmuth (Santa Barbara, California)
                     Burnside Groups of Pime-Power Exponents

18:30             Departure for the Conference Banquet at the old Crusader Castle of Yehiam in the Galilee

Tuesday, June 20
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Pierre de la Harpe  (Geneva, Switzerland)
                     Uniform Growth in Groups of Exponential Growth

10:00-10:50    Frederic Paulin (Orsay, France)
                     Non-Archimedian Diophantine Approximation and Group Actions on Trees
10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    Daniel Wise (Ithaca, New York)
                     Sectional Curvature, Coherence, and Local Indicability

Afternoon sessions

Parallel session 1
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Andy Magid (Norman, Oklahoma)
                     Rigid Groups and Deformations of Representations

15:10-15:40    Hyman Bass (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
                     Rigidity Properties of Discrete Groups
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Dan Guralnick (Haifa, Israel)
                     Cuts in Peano Continua and Splittings of Groups

Parallel session 2
Room 231 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Uri Bader (Haifa, Israel)
                     Lie Group Actions on Manifolds with Algebraic Structure

15:10-15:40    Bernhard Muehlherr (Dortmund, Germany)
                     Normalizers of parabolic subgroups in Coxeter groups                   
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Warren Dicks (Barcelona, Spain)
                     Hyperbolic Once-Punctured-Torus Bundles

16:50-17:20    Greg Conner (Provo, Utah)
                     Fundamental Groups of One-Dimensional Spaces

Parallel session 3
Room 232 Amado Mathematics Building
14:30-15:00    Kevin Whyte (Salt Lake City, Utah)
                     Quasi-Actions on Trees

15:10-15:40    Bert Wiest (Vancouver, British Columbia)
                     Quasi-Isometries of F₂ X Zⁿ and F₂ X F₂
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Anna Dyubina (Tel Aviv, Israel)
                     Geometry of Wreath Products

16:50-17:20    Eric Swenson (Provo, Utah)
                     Convex Subgroups of Torsion in CAT(0) Groups

Wednesday, June 21
Morning session
Butler Auditorium
09:00-09:50    Mladen  Bestvina (Salt Lake City, Utah)
                     Proper Actions of Lattices on Contractible Manifolds

10:00-10:50    Rostislav Grigorchuk (Jerusalem, Israel and Moscow, Russia)
                     Branch and Fractal Groups
10:50-11:20   

11:20-12:10    Robert Gilman (Hoboken, New Jersey)
                     Formal Languages and Groups

 
Closing session
Butler Auditorium
14:30-15:00    Laurent Bartholdi (Jerusalem, Israel)
                     Lie Algebras of Groups Acting on Rooted Trees

15:10-15:40    Marc Bourdon (Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, France)
                     Rigidity of Quasi-Isometries for Some Hyperbolic Buildings
15:40-16:10   

16:10-16:40    Bertrand Remy (Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, France)
                     Classical Properties for Kac-Moody Lattices in Trees and Hyperbolic Buildings

16:50-17:20    Armando Martino (London, England)
                     Fixed Subgroups in the Free Group of Rank Three