UGA VIGRE Research Groups, Spring 2008

Algebra Group

Lenny Chastkofsky
Faculty: Brian Boe and Dan Nakano
Graduate students: Bobbe Cooper, Kenyon Platt, Wenjing Li, Carrie Wright, Irfan Bagci, Ben Connell, Jae-Ho Shin
Post-Doc: Ben Jones

We will be studying Cohomology of Lie Algebras in characteristic p. Kostant's Theorem gives a description of the cohomology in characteristic 0. Previously, the group had come up with a new proof that the cohomology is the same as in characteristic 0 for large enough primes, and that there is always extra cohomology for small enough primes. By using Magma to compute many examples, the group is close to coming up with a conjecture as to precisely when these exceptions occur. We will work on refining this conjecture, and think of how we might prove it.


Algebraic Geometry Group
Elham Izadi

Graduate Students: Maxim Arap, Tyler Kelly, Lev Konstantinovskyi, Al Lapointe, Jeremy Praissman, Lucius Schoenbaum, Benjamin Wyser  
Undergraduates: Kyle Istvan and Jasmine Mathis

The group is investigating properties of Fano varieties of linear spaces in various hypersurfaces.

Circle Packing Group

Sa'ar Hersonsky

Faculty: Will Kazez and Malcolm Adams
Graduate Students: Jennifer Belton, Xiaoyan Hu, Yang Liu, Matt Mastin, Whitney Montgomery
Undergraduate students: Nona Dowling,Casey Murphy, Meredith Perrie, Josh Wood.

Circle Packing VIGRE group will be first studying the Koebe-Andreev-Thurston Theorem. We will start with some basic facts about Circle Packing and constant curvature geometries in dimension two. We will then learn some foundational tools in the field, basic examples and explore applications and further research directions.

 

Tropical Geometry Group

Valery Alexeev

Faculty: Dino Lorenzini, Gordana Matic, Robert Varley
Graduate students: Michael Berglund, Lev Konstantinovskiy, Maxim Arap, Kevin Kennedy, Leopold Matamba, Jennifer Muskovin, Brandon Samples, Kate Thompson, Maury LeBlanc
Undergraduate: Eric Cho(not for credit), Joe Brown

The aim of the group is to study this new and rapidly developing and  its applications  in the fields of interest to the participants:  algebraic geometry, arithmetic geometry, 
topology, mathematical  physics, quantum theory. We also aim to work on a circle of problems related to curves and to moduli spaces, motivated by several open  problems in classical 
algebraic geometry and number theory.