Welcome to THE XVI Oporto Meeting on Geometry, Topology and Physics

The XVIth Oporto Meeting on Geometry, Topology and Physics will take place in Faro, Portugal, from July 5th to July 8th, 2007 (Thursday through Sunday). As the name suggests, these meetings usually take place in Oporto, in the north of Portugal. However, for a change, the organizing committee decided to hold next year’s meeting in Faro, in the southern-most province of Portugal, the Algarve. The aim of the Oporto meetings is to bring together mathematicians and physicists interested in the inter-relation between geometry, topology and physics and to provide them with a pleasant and informal environment for scientific interchange. The web pages of previous meetings can be found at: OM.

As in previous years, the meeting is focussed on the short courses, consisting of 3 one-hour lectures each, given by the four main speakers. The talks are at the advanced graduate or postdoctoral level, and should be of interest to all researchers wishing to learn about recent developments in the overlap between geometry, topology and physics. These courses are supplemented by one-hour talks delivered by two other invited speakers. The remaining participants are invited to submit titles and abstracts for contributed half-hour talks. The latter should be relevant to the main topic of the meeting.

The main topic of our XVIth edition will be:

The combinatorics, geometry, topology and physics of knot homology