Let G be a finite group, V a finite dimensional G- module over a field F, and S(V) the symmetric algebra of V. The above problem seeks to determine when is the ring of invariants S(V)^G , a polynomial ring. In the non-modular case (i.e. char(F) being prime to order(G)), this was settled in the Shephard-Todd-Chevalley theorem. The modular case (i.e. char(F) divides order (G) ), is still wide open. I shall discuss some older results due to Serre, Nakajima , Kemper-Malle and explain some new results, mostly in dimension 3.

The sofic groups and hyperlinear groups are groups approximable by finite symmetric
and by unitary groups, respectively. I recall their definitions and discuss why those classes of groups are interesting. Then I consider approximations by other classes of groups and review some results, including rather recent ones by N. Nikolov, J. Schneider, A.Thom, https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.06092 .
If time permits I'll speak about stability and its relations with approximability.

Let A be an Artin group. It is known that if A is spherical (of finite type) and irreducible (not a direct sum), then it has infinite cyclic center.
It is conjectured that all other irreducible Artin groups have trivial center. I prove this conjecture under a stronger assumption that not being spherical namely, if there is a standard generator which is not contained in any 3-generated spherical standard parabolic subgroup. The main tool is relative presentations of Artin groups.

The Teichmuller space with the Thurston metric and Outer Space with the Lipschitz metric are two examples of spaces with an asymmetric metric i.e. d(x,y)
eq d(y,x). The latter case is also incomplete: There exist Cauchy sequences that do not have a limit. We develop the theory of the completion of an asymmetric space and give lots of examples. Time permitting we will describe the case of Outer Space.

We develop a correspondence between the study of Borel equivalence relations induced by closed subgroups of $S_\infty$, and the study of symmetric models of set theory without choice, and apply it to prove a conjecture of Hjorth-Kechris-Louveau (1998).

Title for the day: "Quantum ergodicity and spectral theory with a discrete flavour"

9:00-10:50: Shimon Brooks (Bar Ilan), "Delocalization of Graph Eigenfunctions"
14:00-15:50: Elon Lindenstrauss (HUJI), "Quantum ergodicity on graphs and beyond"

See also the Basic Notions by Elon Lindenstrauss @ Ross 70 (16:30).

Abstract for morning session:

Abstract. Let L be a non-archimedean local field of characteristic 0. In this talk we will present a variant of the theory of (\varphi,\Gamma)-modules associated with Lubin-Tate groups, developed by Kisin and Ren, in which we replace the Lubin-Tate tower by the maximal abelian extension \Gamma=Gal (L^ab/L). This variation allows us to compute the functors of induction and restriction for (\varphi,\Gamma)-modules, when the ground field L changes. If time permits, we will also discuss the Cherbonnier-Colmez theorem on overconvergence in our setting.
Joint work with Ehud de Shalit.

We shall discuss several topics regarding symplectic measurements in the classical phase space. In particular: Viterbo's volume-capacity conjecture and its relation with Mahler conjecture, the symplectic size of random convex bodies, the EHZ capacity of convex polytopes (following the work of Pazit Haim-Kislev), and (if time permits) also computational complexity aspects of estimating symplectic capacities.

Abstract: Let V be an irreducible algebraic subvariety of C^n X C^n of
dimension n.
If Schanuel Conjecture holds, under some natural conditions on V, we
show that, if V is defined over the rationals, there exists a in C^n
such that (a, exp(a)) is a generic point of V.

Special day on sparsification
Speakers: Ilan Newman and Yuri Rabinovich.

Part I:   10:30 - 12:30
Part II:  14:00 - 15:50

Abstract for the day:
Time permitting, we plan to discuss the following topics (in this order):

1.
* Additive Sparsification and VC dimension
* Multiplicative Sparsification
* Examples: cut weights, cut-dimension of L_1 metrics, general metrics,
                    and their high-dimensional analogues

2.

We will explain what high dimensions are, and describe some questions and answers in geometry and combinatorics of the high dimensional world.

Ergodic theoretic methods in the context of homogeneous dynamics have been highly successful in number theoretic and other applications. A lacuna of these methods is that usually they do not give rates or effective estimates. Einseidler, Venkatesh and Margulis proved a rather remarkable quantitative equidistribution result for periodic orbits of semisimple groups in homogenous spaces that can be viewed as an effective version of a result of Mozes and Shah based on Ratner's measure classification theorem.

This is the second of two lectures on the paper Einseidler,, Margulis, Mohammadi and Venkatesh https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05884. In this second lecture I will explain how the authors obtain using property tau (uniform spectral gap for arithmetic quotient) quantitaive equidistribution results for periodic orbits of maximal semisimple groups. Surprisingly, one can then use this theorem to establish property tau...

Contingency tables are matrices with fixed row and column sums.  They are in natural correspondence with bipartite multi-graphs with fixed degrees and can also be viewed as integer points in transportation polytopes.  Counting and random sampling of contingency tables is a fundamental problem in statistics which remains unresolved in full generality.  

In the talk, I will review both asymptotic and MCMC approaches, and then present a new Markov chain construction which provably works for sparse margins.  I conclude with some curious experimental results and conjectures.  Read more about CS Theory -- Erdős Lecture II: Counting contigency tables