Fifteen mathematical scientists were recently given the opportunity to attend a five-day conference on Dynamics, Measures, and Dimensions in Bedlewo, Poland thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation.
University of Connecticut assistant professor of mathematics Vasileios Chousionis applied for this grant to give researchers who normally would be unable to travel to conferences like this the opportunity to interact with international colleagues.
“The participants had the chance to meet and discuss scientific ideas with senior and junior colleagues from many other countries, in a vibrant environment,” Chousionis says. “The grant supported in total 15 scientists from the United States, 12 of them being early-career researchers, and gave them the unique opportunity to participate in such a memorable conference on dynamical systems.”
Dynamical systems is one of the most active research fields in modern mathematics. The field studies how various processes evolve over time. Dynamical systems models might describe planetary movements or how a disease spreads through a population.
The conference was a truly international melding of the best minds in the field with participants from Australia, England, Brazil, Austria, Hungary, Germany, France, Israel, Finland, and more.
“This conference has been a great opportunity for collaboration and networking at an international level,” Chousionis says. “It provided a platform for the leading experts of our field to maintain continuity of contact within the research community and allowed younger researchers to establish connections that are essential for career development.”
The week before the conference, there was a series of three crash courses by prominent dynamics researchers designed for graduate students and postdocs.
“This was a great chance for junior researchers to attend introductory lectures related to the themes of the conference and interact with each other in a more relaxed setting,” Chousionis says.
There were dozens of talks and presentations on dynamics and related fields.
“It was great to see all these different big names in the field and new researchers give talks on complex dynamics, dimension theory, and fractal geometry,” says Chris Hayes, a UConn graduate student in mathematics who attended the conference. “It felt very stimulating and I came back having had some great discussions and it gave me some ideas that I wouldn’t have had if I had not gone.”
The conference also covered topics related to Dynamics such as ergodic theory, fractal geometry, topology, and number theory.
This grant helped support a long-established tradition of cooperation between American and Polish mathematicians. The conference was also an opportunity to celebrate the 60th birthday of Polish mathematician Mariusz Urbański, who has made fundamental contributions in dynamics.
Chousionis received his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in mathematics in 2008. He joined the UConn faculty in 2015. His research interests include geometric measure theory, harmonic analysis, dynamical systems, potential theory, and analysis on metric spaces.
This grant was NSF Award No.: 1901364.
