Chris Gerig (Harvard): SW = Gr
Whenever the Seiberg-Witten (SW) invariants of a 4-manifold X are defined, there exist certain 2-forms on X which are symplectic away from some circles. When there are no circles, i.e. X is symplectic, Taubes' ``SW=Gr'' theorem asserts that the SW invariants are equal to well-defined counts of J-holomorphic curves (Taubes' Gromov invariants). In this talk I will describe an extension of Taubes' theorem to non-symplectic X: there are well-defined counts of J-holomorphic curves in the complement of these circles, which recover the SW invariants. This ``Gromov invariant'' interpretation was originally conjectured by Taubes in 1995.

Biji Wong (CIRGET Montreal): A Floer homology invariant for 3-orbifolds via bordered Floer theory
Using bordered Floer theory, we construct an invariant for 3-orbifolds with singular set a knot that generalizes the hat flavor of Heegaard Floer homology. We show that for a large class of 3-orbifolds the orbifold invariant behaves like HF-hat in that the orbifold invariant, together with a relative Z_2-grading, categorifies the order of H_1^orb. When the 3-orbifold arises as Dehn surgery on an integer-framed knot in S^3, we use the {-1,0,1}-valued knot invariant epsilon to determine the relationship between the orbifold invariant and HF-hat of the 3-manifold underlying the 3-orbifold.

From a group action on a space, define a variant of the configuration space by insisting that no two points inhabit the same orbit. When the action is almost free, this "orbit configuration space'' is the complement of an arrangement of subvarieties inside the cartesian product, and we use this structure to study its topology. We give an abstract combinatorial description of its poset of layers (connected components of intersections from the arrangement) which turns out to be of much independent interest as a generalization of partition and Dowling lattices. The close relationship to these classical posets is then exploited to give explicit cohomological calculations akin to those of (Totaro '96). Joint work with Nir Gadish.

Convex surface theory and bypasses are extremely powerful tools
for analyzing contact 3-manifolds.  In particular they have been
successfully applied to many classification problems.  After reviewing
convex surface theory in dimension three,  we explain how to generalize many
of their properties to higher dimensions.   This is joint work with Yang
Huang.

A Teichmuller curve is a totally geodesic curve in the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. These curves are defined by polynomials with integer coefficients that are irreducible over C.  We will show that these polynomials have surprising factorizations mod p.  This is joint work with Keerthi Madapusi Pera.

A classical result of Goldman states that character variety of an oriented surface is a symplectic algebraic variety, and that the Goldman Lie algebra of free loops on the surface acts by Hamiltonian vector fields on the character variety. I will describe a vast generalization of these results, including to higher dimensional manifolds where the role of the Goldman Lie algebra is played by the Chas-Sullivan string bracket in the string topology of the manifold. These results follow from a general statement in noncommutative geometry. In addition to generalizing Goldman's result to string topology, we obtain a number of other interesting consequences including the universal Hitchin system on a Riemann surface. This is joint work with Chris Brav.