Kasia Jankiewicz (University of California Santa Cruz)

Math & Stats Department Colloquium

Friday, October 21st, 2022

Time: 2:30 p.m.  Place: Jeffery Hall, Room 234

Speaker: Kasia Jankiewicz (University of California Santa Cruz)

Title: Questions about Artin groups

Abstract: Artin groups are a family of infinite discrete groups that includes free groups, free abelian groups, and braid groups. They are closely related to Coxeter groups. They are defined by simple-looking presentations, but their geometry is mysterious, and many basic questions about them remain open. I will discuss some of my contributions to understanding Artin groups.

Kasia is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Cruz. Previously she was an L.E. Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago, and a Research Member at the MSRI program Random and Arithmetic Structures in Topology. She completed her PhD at McGill University in 2018, under the supervision of Piotr Przytycki and Daniel Wise. She holds an NSF grant, has held AWM-NSF and AMS-Simons Travel grants, and will be visiting the CRM in the winter as a CRM-Simons Scholar in Residence. Broadly speaking, Kasia's research is in geometric group theory. She is particularly interested in non-positive curvature, cube complexes, Artin groups, Coxeter groups, random groups, small cancellation theories, separability properties, algebraic bering and coherence.