Conference: 53rd Barrett Memorial Lectures: Recent Development in Geometric Group Theory

The "Current Developments in Geometric Group Theory Conference" will be held as part of the 53rd John and Lida Barrett Memorial Lectures at the Highland Manor Inn & Conference Center in Townsend, Tennessee, on May 22 - 25, 2025. The Barrett Lectures began in 1970 as a tribute to Drs. John H. and Lida Barrett, former faculty and department heads of the Mathematics Department at the University of Tennessee.

The Barrett Lectures have been held annually since 1970 and are known as one of the oldest and most prestigious mathematics conferences in the southeastern United States. This event is expected to draw 40-50 participants and will include local and regional, national and international researchers and graduate students. One of the primary goals of the Barrett Lectures is to bring prominent researchers working in active areas to Knoxville, as a service to the southeastern region of the country as well as the national mathematics community.

The conferences invite a range of mathematicians, from established experts to early career researchers and graduate students, to attack the biggest challenges in the area of mapping class groups and the newly emerged field of big mapping class groups.

The topic of the 2025 Barrett Lectures has the advantage of a broad appeal to researchers at universities throughout the country who are exploring a range of problems and techniques in the current development of geometry and dynamics of non-positively curved groups. Participants will present and learn about breakthrough results in the area of low dimensional topology and geometric group theory, such as the first examples of purely pseudo-Anosov closed surface groups in a mapping class group.

The topics covered will include large scale geometry of Teichmuller space, random walks in non-positively curved groups, surface subgroups of mapping class groups, algorithmic problems in Out(Fn) and coarse geometry of large mapping class groups. Juxtaposing discussions with different techniques has the potential to result in synergy and fresh ideas. More information about the conference can be found at: https://math.utk.edu/barrett/53rd-lectures/.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.