A Conference in Low-Dimensional Topology in Honor of Joan Birman's 70th Birthday

March 14-15, 1998

All talks will take place in 312 Mathematics. Coffee will be served in the Math Lounge (508 Mathematics).
The banquet, hosted by Barnard College, will take place in the James Room on the fourth floor of Barnard Hall.

9:30-10:00	Opening remarks. Coffee, bagels, donuts, orange juice, etc.
10:00-11:00	Colin Adams(Williams College ) What Cusps Have to Say about Knots, Links and 3-Manifolds and How they Repay the Favor
11:30-12:30	Xiao-Song Lin(UC Riverside ) Invariants of homology 3-spheres
12:30-2:00	Lunch
2:00-3:00	William Menasco(University at Buffalo) Stabilization in the Braid Groups
3:30-4:30	Robert Ghrist(University of Texas, Austin) Contact topology, templates, and inviscid flows
6:45	Reception at Barnard
7:30	Banquet at Barnard

9:00-9:30	Coffee, bagels, donuts, orange juice, etc.
9:30-10:30	Caroline Series(University of Warwick) Simple Closed Curves on the Twice Punctured Torus
10:45-11:45	Jozef Przytycki (George Washington University) Algebraic topology based on knots: a case study in the history of ideas
11:45-1:00	Lunch
1:00-2:00	Arkady Vaintrob (New Mexico State University) Multi-variable Alexander polynomial and solvable Lie algebras
2:15-3:15	Vaughan Jones(UC Berkeley) TBA