11/03/2024

'An honor to be invited to speak,' says Robert Bryant.

Leading researcher in nonlinear partial differential equations and differential geometry with a long history of service to the community, Robert Bryant (Duke University) opened, this Monday (11), the congress Special Holonomy and Geometric Structures on Complex Manifolds , held by IMPA in partnership with the Simons Foundation.

Bryant, who has been to the institute on other occasions, highlighted how rewarding it is to participate in the event and gave an introductory lecture on the theory of holonomy entitled " A Century of Holonomy ".

“ It’s an honor to have been invited to speak here. As some of you know, a group of friends and I have been working together for the past eight years with the support of the Simons Foundation. I know that many geometers here are not familiar with holonomy, so I’m going to give an introductory lecture on the subject. Those who have been collaborating on this for the past eight years can leave because I’m not going to say anything you don’t already know, but I hope this will start a dialogue and communication between people from different areas of Geometry,” he said jokingly.

On Monday (11), Jason Lotay (University of Oxford), Andryi Haydys (University of Brussels), Udhav Fowdar (Unicamp) and Ilka Agricola (University of Marburg) also participated in the event, who highlighted the importance of financial support for the work. “I wanted to comment on how lucky we are to have funding to do what we love.”

Until Friday (15), the congress will bring together 23 leading researchers in the field, including Bobby Acharya (King's College London) and Mirjam Cvetic (University of Pennsylvania), physicists with international reputations. See the full program here.

Paolo Piccione (University of São Paulo), a member of the event's organizing committee, highlighted the participation of renowned experts from various countries at the meeting. “This event was made possible thanks to the work of the organizing committee, which includes senior researchers, but especially young researchers who did an excellent job organizing all of this. I want to thank them personally. Simon Chiossi is one of them, Viviana del Barco and Andrew Clark. These are the people who really work for this meeting. And finally, I would like to say that Brazil is an excellent place to do mathematics and make friends too, so my wish is that at the end of the conference everyone returns home with a stronger mathematical background and also with an enriched network of new friends,” Piccione stated during the opening of the event.

: Jason Lotay (Oxford)

: Andryi Haydys (Brussels)

: Udhav Fowdar (Unicamp)