Author: Graham Leuschke

The CRM (Centre de Recerca Matemàtica) announces a conference on “Interactions between representation theory and commutative algebra”, to be held at the Institut de Matemàtica in Barcelona, Spain, September 25 to 27, 2008.
The meeting will focus on the deep connections between the representation theory of finite dimensional algebras and the module theory of commutative rings.
The organizing committee for the conference consists of Lidia Angeleri-Hügel (Università dell’Insubria), Dolors Herbera (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and Henning Krause (Universität Paderborn). The speakers include:

• Luchezar Avramov
• Silvana Bazzoni
• Ragnar-Olaf Buchweitz
• Alberto Facchini
• Srikanth Iyengar
• Helmut Lenzing
• Rosa Maria Miró-Roig
• Osamu Iyama
• Ringel, Claus Michael
• Wolfgang Rump
• Roger Wiegand

For more information, please see the web page for the meeting. The deadline for application is June 16, 2008.
update 14 December 2008: The organizers have posted some photos from the conference, including group pictures. Go see!

Hacettepe University (Beytepe Campus) at Ankara, Turkey will host the International Conference on Ring and Module Theory from August 18-22, 2008. The program will consist of Plenary talks (approx. 45 min.) and Regular talks (20-25 min.). Confirmed plenary speakers include:

• Prof. Dr. Toma ALBU (Institute of Mathematics, Romanian Academy, Bucharest)
• Prof. Dr. Edgar ENOCHS (University of KENTUCKY)
• Prof. Dr. Surender K. JAIN (OHIO University)
• Prof. Dr. Friedrich KASCH (University of MUNICH)
• Prof. Dr. Lance W. SMALL (University of CALIFORNIA, San Diego)
• Prof. Dr. Patrick F. SMITH (University of GLASGOW)
• Prof. Dr. Roger WIEGAND (University of NEBRASKA)
• Prof. Dr. Efim I. ZELMANOV (University of CALIFORNIA, San Diego)

Participants pay either: (1) Basic Registration Fee of approximately $100 USD, €75 or 130 YTL which will include conference materials, social program, tea and coffees and bus transportation, or (2) Full Registration Fee of approximately $450 USD, or 325euros which will cover the Basic Registration Fee, accomodation (on Campus) and meals (breakfast, light lunch, dinner).
The deadline for preliminary registration and submission of an abstract is May 1, 2008. Conference details and registration, along with more information, can be found on the conference website.

We received the following announcement from Dan Grayson:
Dear Macaulay 2 user,
With funding from the NSF, we are organizing a Macaulay 2 workshop, for the period Saturday, June 28, 2008 to Thursday, July 3, just after the MRC meetings of the AMS. Pending final confirmation, the location of the workshop will be Snowbird, Utah. Travel days will be the Saturday and the Thursday, and activities will start Saturday evening. (This is not the same event as the Macaulay 2 conference in March.)
The purpose of the workshop is to bring the Macaulay 2 developers together with those who would like to share or to develop their skills at writing packages for Macaulay 2 and at developing the corresponding mathematical algorithms. Sample software projects that might be undertaken are visible here.
Attendance is by invitation only, and financial support is available for approximately 15 people. If you would like to attend, please let us know as soon as possible. Everyone interested is encouraged to apply, including graduate students and postdocs. Your application should include

1. information about what algorithms you would like to work on, and what you have done in the past,
2. a good estimate of travel expenses, and whether you would require financial support for housing and meals, and if you will be willing to share a room, (rooms are in limited supply, if additional single rooms are available, and you want one, we may ask you to pay the additional cost of $52 per night).
3. your current institution, and if you are a graduate student, your advisor’s name.

We would like to receive applications by March 1 (THIS SATURDAY) and to allocate funds to participants by March 15.
Our organizer for the workshop is Amelia Taylor, and applications should be directed to her.
A few other pieces of information you may need:

1. If we pay for your travel, it should be on an American air carrier, if at all possible.
2. Please commit to being present for the entire workshop.
3. Our meals will be joint and our menus will be arranged in advance.
4. You will need to bring your laptop with Macaulay 2 on it to the workshop.

David Eisenbud
Daniel R. Grayson
Michael E. Stillman
Amelia Taylor

The AMS’s new program, Mathematics Research Communities (MRC), will feature in its first year a Workshop in Computational Algebra & Convexity, June 21-27, 2008.
The workshop is aimed at peridoctoral students at U.S. institutions (where “peridoctoral” means 2 years before or after the Ph.D.). It will be held at the Snowbird Resort outside Salt Lake City, UT. The organizers are H. Schenck (UIUC), M. Stillman (Cornell), and J. Verschelde (UIC); the deadline for applications is March 1, 2008.
For more information, please see the MRC web page, or a recent article in the Notices of the AMS (PDF link).

In honor of the seventieth birthday of Surender K. Jain, Ohio University will hold a Conference on Algebra and its Applications, June 18-21, 2008. The Conference is dedicated to recent developments in classical Ring Theory, Module Theory, Representation Theory, Group Algebras, Rings with Polynomial Identities, and related topics including applications.
There will be invited and contributed talks; the deadline for submitting abstracts for all talks is May 15, 2008.
For registration, submission of abstract, and other information, please see the conference web page.

In honor of the 60th birthday of Luchezar Avramov, the University of Nebraska will host a week-long conference in Commutative Algebra in May 2008, organized by Lars Winther Christensen, Srikanth Iyengar, and Roger Wiegand. The tentative dates for the conference are May 18–22.
Eventually, more information (including firm dates etc.) will appear on the conference web page.
update 31 August: the link above for the conference web page has changed; the new page now has information on the schedule, registration, travel and accommodations, and a list of confirmed speakers.

The GSU-USC Commutative Algebra Seminar, April 25-27 2008, Atlanta.
The seminar represents a collaborative effort of commutative algebraists at Georgia State University and University of South Carolina to increase exposure of their research area in the South-East through periodic meetings. The organizers for this meeting in Atlanta are Florian Enescu and Yongwei Yao. The speakers are:

• Ian M. Aberbach
• Joe Brennan
• Tai Ha
• Andrew Kustin
• Liana Sega
• Adela Vraciu
• Diana White

More information can be found on the web page of the seminar.

The University of Illinois at Chicago will host a conference in Algebraic Geometry and Commutative Algebra on April 11-13, 2008, to celebrate Robin Hartshorne’s 70th birthday. The speakers include:

• Marta Casanellas (Barcelona)
• David Gieseker (U.C.L.A.)
• Mark Gross (San Diego)
• Robin Hartshorne (U.C. Berkeley)
• Melvin Hochster (Michigan)
• Craig Huneke (Kansas)
• Rob Lazarsfeld (Michigan)
• Juan Migliore (Notre Dame)
• David Mumford (Brown)
  Ignacio Sols (Madrid)

For more information, including the organizing committee and information about housing and transportation, see the conference web page.

The 2008 Spring Central Section Meeting of the AMS will be held April 5-6, 2008 at Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Juan Migliore and Uwe Nagel are organizing a Special Session on “Combinatorial and Geometric Aspects of Commutative Algebra”. For more information, see the AMS web page for the meeting.