Source: Manuel Rivera
By: Manuel Rivera, Associate Professor of Mathematics
The First Colombian Meeting in Geometry and Topology (Primer Encuentro Colombiano de Geometría y Topología - www.ecogyt.com), co-sponsored by Purdue Mathematics, took place this summer (July 22 - August 2) in Bogotá, Colombia. Manuel Rivera, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Purdue, was one of the organizers of the conference. This two-week event was held at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL) and had two parts: 1) a summer school directed towards advanced undergraduate and graduate students with mini-courses taught by Colombian professors based abroad; and 2) a research conference in the second week featuring both local and international speakers, leaders in the fields of geometry and topology. More than one hundred students from all over Colombia and the region attended the summer school during the first week. Seventeen professors from different parts of Colombia and the world joined the event during the second week to present their work on recent advances in the field. Four of these professors came from institutions in the Midwest: Purdue University, Indiana University, University of Notre Dame, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. High-level mathematics was discussed in a friendly, inclusive, and open environment, which facilitated fruitful interactions between local students and members of the global mathematical community with ties to Colombia.
This event was made possible thanks to the financial support of Purdue University, Yale University, Amherst College, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Purdue played a crucial role in the event: Manuel Rivera, who was one of the main organizers of the event, also was one of the lecturers during the mini-course session, Eric Samperton was an invited speaker at the research conference, and the mathematics department graduate students Sofía Martínez, Sebastián Muñoz, Daniel Tolosa, and Mateo Matijasevic participated throughout the two weeks of the event. Daniel Tolosa, and Mateo Matijasevic were undergraduates at UNAL in Bogotá and arrived at Purdue through the Colombia Purdue Partnership research program. The event took place at a beautiful new building at UNAL in Bogotá called the Gloria Amparo Galeano Building (here is a video with more information about this new space). Here are some pictures of the event.
One of the main objectives for this conference was to establish it as a recurring event that meets every two years in a different city of Colombia. The goal of these meetings is to foster friendship and collaboration within the Colombian geometry and topology community itself as well as with international researchers and leading experts in the field. The organizers foresee the Colombian mathematical community, which is highly dynamic and currently flourishing, playing a pivotal role in the exchange of mathematical ideas and results across different international research groups. We invite members of Purdue Faculty with ties to Colombia to consider organizing international events like this one in collaboration with Colombian institutions and other institutions in the US and abroad.