Lei Chen (Caltech): Section problems
In this talk, I will discuss a direction of study in topology: Section problems. There are many variations of the problem: Nielsen realization problems, sections of a surface bundle, sections of a bundle with special property (e.g. nowhere zero vector field). I will discuss some techniques including homology, Thurston-Nielsen classification and dynamics. Also I will share many open problems. Some of the results are joint work with Nick Salter.

Lisa Piccirillo (UT Austin): TBA