The family of high rank arithmetic groups is a class of groups playing an important role in various areas of mathematics. It includes SL(n,Z), for n>2 , SL(n, Z[1/p] ) for n>1, their finite index subgroups and many more. A number of remarkable results about them have been proven including; Mostow rigidity, Margulis Super rigidity and the Quasi-isometric rigidity.

I will talk about a new Abelian category associated to an open variety with normal-crossings (or more generally, logarithmic) choice of compactification, which behaves in remarkable (and remarkably nice) ways with respect to changes of compactification and duality, and which first appeared in work on mirror symmetry.

The talk is based on the joint work with Yanki Lekili. The associative Yang-Baxter equation is a quadratic equation related to both classical and quantum Yang-Baxter equations. It appears naturally in connection with triple Massey products in the derived category of coherent sheaves on elliptic curve and its degenerations. We show that all of its nondegenerate trigonometric solutions are obtained from Fukaya categories of some noncompact surfaces. We use this to prove that any two simple vector bundles on a cycle of projective lines are related by a sequence of spherical twists.

Zilber's trichotomy conjecture, in modern formulation, distinguishes three flavours of geometries of strongly minimal sets --- disintegrated/trivial, modular, and the geometry of an ACF. Each of these three flavours has a classic ``template'' --- a set with no structure, a projective space over a prime field, and an algebraically closed field, respectively. The class of ab initio constructions with which Hrushovski refuted the conjecture features a new flavour of geometries --- non-modular, yet prohibiting any algebraic structure.

Title: The behavior of rational points in one-parameter families Abstract: How often does a "random" algebraic plane curve f(x,y) = 0 have a solution with rational coordinates? In one-parameter "twist" families of elliptic curves, Goldfeld conjectured that there should be a rational point exactly half of the time. Recent progress towards this conjecture makes use of Selmer groups, and I'll explain the geometric idea underlying their construction. I'll also describe results for families of curves of higher genus, and abelian varieties of higher dimension.

It is a familiar fact (sometimes attributed to Ahlbrandt-Ziegler, though it is possibly older) that two aleph0-categorical theories are bi-interpretable if and only if their countable models have isomorphic topological isomorphism groups. Conversely, groups arising in this manner can be given an abstract characterisation, and a countable model of the theory (up to bi-interpretation, of course) can be reconstructed.

Dependent theories have now a very solid and well-established collection of results and applications. Beyond first order, the development of "dependency" has been rather scarce so far. In addition to the results due to Kaplan, Lavi and Shelah (dependent diagrams and the generic pair conjecture), I will speak on a few lines of current research around the extraction of indiscernibles for dependent diagrams and on various forms on dependence for abstract elementary classes. This is joint work with Saharon Shelah.

A special class among the countably infinite relational structures is the class of homogeneous structures. These are the structures where every finite partial isomorphism extends to a total automorphism. A countable set, the ordered rationals, and the random graph are all homogeneous.

We will present briefly the "multiverse view" of set theory, advocated by Hamkins, that there are a multitude of set-theoretic universes, and not one background universe, and his proposed "Multiverse Axioms". We will then move on to present the main result of Gitman and Hamkins in their paper "A natural model of the multiverse axioms" - that the countable computably saturated models of ZFC form a "toy model" of the multiverse axioms.

I'll show how the Vandermonde determinant identity allows us to estimate the volume of certain spaces of polynomials in one variable (or rather, of homogeneous polynomials in two variables), as the degree goes to infinity. I'll explain what this is good for in the context of globally valued fields, and, given time constraints, may give some indications on the approach for the "real inequality" in higher projective dimension.

Abstract: The set theoretic generalizations of algebras have been introduced in the 1960s to give a set theoretic interpretation of usual algebraic structures. The shift in perspective from algebra to set theory is that in set theory the focus is on the collection of possible algebras and sub-algebras on specific cardinals rather than on particular algebraic structures. The study of collections of algebras and sub-algebras has generated many well-known problems in combinatorial set theory (e.g., Chang’s conjecture and the existence of small singular Jonsson cardinals).