Author: Graham Leuschke

The eighth edition of the CoCoA (COmputational COmmutative Algebra) Conference, along with the 3rd edition of the International School on Computer Algebra, will take place at the Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, a Faculty of the Universidad de Cádiz, in Cádiz, Spain, the week beginning Sunday, June 1, 2003.
The School will begin on Monday June 2 and end on Thursday morning, June 5. The COCOA Conference will begin on Thursday afternoon and finish at midday on Saturday, June 7.
There will be two main courses (Gregor Kemper: Computational Invariant Theory; Martin Kreuzer: Computing in Multigraded Structures) and one minicourse (Jose María Ucha: Computational Aspects of D-Modules).
For more information, including information about the organizers and support, please see the conference website.
Update 12 Feb: We now have links to practical information about hotels, tourism etc., as well as travel information for getting to and from Cádiz.
Also, we have a list of confirmed speakers and subjects:

• DeLoera, Jesus – Toric Rational Functions and their applications in Combinatorics, Statistics and Optimization
• Kemper, Gregor – Computer Algebra and Invariants
• Kreuzer, Martin – Multigraded Structures in Polynomial Rings
• Parillo, Pablo – Real Algebra and Convex Optimization
• Stillman, Mike – The Algebraic Geometry of Bayesian Networks
• Thomas, Rekha – Simplicial Complexes, Generic Initial Ideals and Combinatorics
• Pfister, Gerhardt – Computer Algebra and Group Theory

Abstracts should be available soon, and information about applying for support will soon be on the conference website.
Update 5 May: The second announcement for COCOA VIII is posted on the CoCoA web page. Among other things, it mentions that there will be a poster session and a demo session at the conference.
Update 20 Sept.There are many photos of the conference (by John Abbott) posted.

There will be two Special Sessions of interest to commutative algebraists at the AMS Western Sectional Meeting in San Francisco, May 3-4 2003. Ray Heitmann and Irena Swanson will organize a Special Session in Commutative Algebra, and Serkan Hosten and Ezra Miller will organize a Special Session in Combinatorial Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry.
Also, Ray Heitmann will give an invited address titled, “The direct summand conjecture in dimension three”.
See the AMS page for the conference for more information.

The Western Algebraic Geometry Seminar will be held at Stanford Saturday, April 19 and Sunday, April 20. There will be six speakers:

• Kai Behrend (UBC)
  Differential Graded Algebraic Geometry
• Lawrence Ein (UIC)
  Log Canonical Thresholds and Birational Geometry
• Javier Fernandez (Utah)
  Hodge Theoretic Construction of Frobenius Structures
• Grisha Mikhalkin (Utah)
  Tropical Algebraic Geometry and Enumeration of Curves
• Ezra Miller (MSRI/Minnesota)
  Combinatorial Positivity of Universal Formulae in Cohomology
• Richard Thomas (Imperial College)
  Stability Conditions

The conference website is math.stanford.edu/~azinger/wags03sp.

There will be a 2-day conference in commutative algebra at the University of Kentucky, April 12-13, 2003, called the “Bluegrass Algebra Conference”. It is in conjunction with the Hayden-Howard Lecture on April 11, which will be given this year by Craig Huneke. (So BACH^2 = Bluegrass Algebra Conference + Hayden-Howard. With Huneke added, it could even be BACH^3.)
The conference is organized by Alberto Corso and Uwe Nagel. For more information, please contact one of them or see the conference web site.

Banff International Research Station (BIRS)
Banff, Alberta, Canada
Commutative Algebra and Geometry
29 March-03 April, 2003
This conference is associated with the Year in Commutative Algebra at MSRI. Attendance is, however, by invitation only.
From the workshop web page: “It is our intention to invite younger researchers and to also include first-rate mathematicians who work not in commutative algebra proper but in nearby fields. Specifically, we shall invite several leading algebraic geometers. In selecting lectures we will place a particular emphasis on recent developments, applications and future directions.”
“The following is a sample of topics to be discussed in this workshop: toric rings and varieties, Koszul algebras, toric K-theory, exterior algebra methods, arrangements of linear subspaces, Flag varieties and Schubert varieties, Grobner bases, sagbi bases, zero-dimensional schemes, elimination theory, Hilbert schemes, singularities, invariant theory.”

Jim Coykendall and Bernadette Mullins will be organizing a Special Session in Commutative Algebra at the Spring Southeastern Sectional Meeting of the AMS in Baton Rouge, LA, March 14-16, 2003. See the AMS site for the meeting for more details.

The fourth and final workshop of MSRI’s year-long program in Commutative Algebra will focus on Computational Commutative Algebra It will run March 13-15, and organized by Craig Huneke, Serkan Hosten, Bernd Sturmfels (chair), and Irena Swanson.
The workshop is about computational commutative algebra understood in a broad sense, including both theory and its practice in fields related to commutative algebra, such as combinatorics, algebraic geometry, group theory and their applications. It will include talks by Gert-Martin Greuel, Lorenzo Robbiano, and Michael Stillman, followed by a panel discussion on software for commutative algebra. The rest of the workshop will be in standard format, with invited lectures and time for discussions and computer explorations.
Invited speakers include:

• Paolo Aluffi
• Matthias Aschenbrenner
• Jon Carlson
• Marc Chardin
• Gabriela Jeronimo
• Gregor Kemper
• Vic Reiner
• Hal Schenck
• Josef Schicho
• Rekha Thomas

See the MSRI page for the workshop for more information.
There is also limited funding available (especially for graduate students) for travel and accomodation expenses. Information about funding is also available on the website.

The third workshop in the year-long program at MSRI will focus on Homological Algebra and Representation Theory. It will be organized by: Luchezar Avramov, Ragnar Buchweitz, and John Greenlees, and take place February 3-7.
See the MSRI page for the workshop for more information.