Title: Some Link Detection ResultsAbstract: A central question in low dimensional topology is; how can we distinguish links? In this talk I will discuss various classical invariants which can help us do so, as well as the stronger invariant Knot Floer homology and, time permitting, annular Khovanov homology. Indeed, we will see that these latter

Abstract: Cagri will talk about some symplectic/contact topological aspects of Brieskorn singularities $x^p+y^q+z^r=0$. He’ll tell how to draw the surgery diagrams of their canonical contact structures and prove that the Milnor fiber $M(p,q,r)$ symplectically embeds into $M(p’,q’,r’)$ whenever $p\leq p’$, $q\leq q’$, and $r\leq r’$ by explicitly constructing a Stein cobordism between corresponding canonical contact

Title: Geometry of algebraic surfaces via their Cox rings Abstract: Cox ring is an important tool in modern algebraic geometry and several other branches of mathematics. In the first part of this talk, I will briefly review basic theory of Cox ring and explain how it connects birational geometry and geometric invariant theory. Then I

Title: Geometry of algebraic surfaces via combinatorics of cones Abstract: Effective, nef, semiample cones of projective manifolds are fundamental tools in algebraic geometry. They tell us about the geometry of projective manifolds and there are lots of studies about them. However, we still do not know much about these invariants of projective manifolds of general