WAGS / Fall 2006

Western
Algebraic
Geometry
Seminar

• Poster
• Location
• Schedule
• Organizers
• Registration
• Financial Assistance
• Accommodation
• Transportation
• Contact Us
• Local Information
• About WAGS

• Patrick Brosnan, UBC,
  The essential dimension of an algebraic stack

• Paolo Cascini, University of California, Santa Barbara
  Minimal Model Program for Varieties of General Type

• Tommaso de Fernex, University of Utah
  Birational rigidity of hypersurfaces

• Paul Hacking, University of Washington
  Smoothable del Pezzo surfaces with quotient singularities

• János Kollár, Princeton University
  Some interesting hypersurfaces in weighted projective spaces

• Max Lieblich, Princeton University
  Boundedness of families of canonically polarized manifolds

• Sam Payne, Clay Mathematics Institute and Stanford University
  Toward foundations of tropical geometry

All meetings will take place at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Utah. The buildings for the mathematics department are John Witsoe Building (JWB) and LeRoy Cowles Building (LCB). Further details can be found at campus map and building locator.

Christopher Hacon, and Aaron Bertram, Tommaso de Fernex, Y.-P. Lee.

If you have any questions, send us an e-mail to . Our postal address is

Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
155 South 1400 East, JWB 233
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090
U.S.A.

Please, help us have everything ready on time! Register as soon as you know that you will be attending. Just send an e-mail to stating your name, position, and if you will be applying for financial support.

Some financial support will be available for students and young unsupported faculty. Please state in your registration if you need financial assistance.

Deadline for applying support is 30 September. We expect to communicate financial assistance decisions by 2 October.

We have blocked out 15 double rooms and 10 single rooms for the nights of 10-11 Nov 2006 at the University Guest House. The room rate is $72 plus tax per night, breakfast and internet included. Reservations must be made by 27 October, directly through the Guest House. (See the website for the contact information.) When making your reservations, please specify you are using WAGS / Math dept blocked rooms.

Those who are funded by the conference are required to share the double rooms or pay half of the room charge. If you have difficulty finding a roommate, please email us at

You can travel to Salt Lake City by airplane or by car:

By plane: Salt Lake City's international airport is a destination for most airlines. Once at the airport, you can rent a car, take a taxi, or use public transportation to go to the Guest House.

By car: Major highways through Salt Lake City are: Interstates 15 and 80. We suggest that you check the standard internet sites (for instance Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or MapQuest) to obtain maps and driving directions to the Guest House.

• Weather: Current conditions and forecast.
• Salt Lake City web site.
• The University of Utah has a webpage for visitors. It contains links to campus map, direction to campus, etc.

The Western Algebraic Geometry Seminar traces back its origin to the Utah - UCLA Algebraic Geometry Seminar started in 1989 by H. Clemens, D. Gieseker, M. Green, J. Kollár, and R. Lazarsfeld. Later on, it became the Utah - UCLA - Chicago Algebraic Geometry Seminar.

The institutions currently participating in WAGS include Colorado State University, Stanford University, the University of British Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Utah, and the University of Washington. Support for the Seminar is provided by NSF and the participating institutions.

WAGS meets twice per year and congregates an international group of more than 50 mathematicians, from students to experts in the field of Algebraic Geometry. The last few meetings were: Fall 2002 (Utah), Spring 2003 (Stanford), Fall 2003 (Vancouver), Spring 2004 (Utah), Fall 2004 (Colorado State), Spring 2005 (Washington), Fall 2005 (Utah), Spring 2006 (Berkeley).