Transversal and Helly-type theorems in Geometry, Combinatorics and Topology (09w5047)

Arriving Sunday, September 20 and departing Friday September 25, 2009

Organizers

Luis Montejano (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Imre Barany (Renyi Institute)
Jacob E. Goodman ( City College, City University of New York)
Deborah Oliveros (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Ted Bisztriczky (University of Calgary)

Objectives

In the past ten years, there has been a significant increase of research
activity and productivity in the areas of Transversal and Helly-type Theorems.
Notable advances have been made in the development of a theory of Hyperplane Transversals and a theory of Colorful Theorems generalizing classical results from convexity, and the completion of the Line Transversal Theory for families of mutually disjoint congruent disks in the plane. This increased research activity by eminent experts such as Eckhoff (UCL), R. Gardner (Western Washington), J.E. Goodman (CUNY), G. Kalai (Jerusalem), W. Kuperberg (Auburn), D.Larman (UCL), J.Matousek (Prague), R. Pollack (Courant) and H. Tverberg (Bergen) has attracted to the field an excellent and very promising group of young researchers. Among these, we mention G. Ambrus (London), A. Deza (McMaster), F. Fodor (Szeged), A. Holmsen (Bergen), J. Jeronimo (U.A. Guerrero), T. Kaiser (Prague), and M. Naszodi (Edmonton).

We believe that it is now very important to bring together senior and junior researchers in the increasingly important field of Transversal and Helly-type Theorems. There is a great necessity not only to asses recent advances and but also to foster awareness of the inter-disciplinary aspects (geometry, topology, combinatorics, computer science) of the field. This latter aspect is particularly important in order to map future directions of research.