3. Postdoctoral Program - MSRI

The participants: There were several groups of participants.
1. Senior participants. Symplectic geometry is often considered a field where there are lots
of women, but in fact rather few of the more senior women work in symplectic and contact
topology, which is the part of the subject that will be emphasized in the year long program.
However, there is quite a large group in the related area of equivariant symplectic geometry.
Here I am thinking of Yael Karshon, Susan Tolman, Tara Holm, Rebecca Goldin, and younger
women such as Megumi Harada and River Chang. So another aim of the conference was to
invite these women, and involve them more in the year’s activities. They all came except for
Rebecca Goldin, and all who did not have to teach stayed for the Introductory Workshop.
All of them (including Goldin) are planning further visits in the spring (except for Karshon
who is staying on for part of September).
2. Younger participants. We gave partial expenses to as many as we could, giving preference
to those whom we thought could stay for the Introductory Workshop and profit from it.
3. Participants from abroad. There is a very flourishing school of symplectic geometry in
Europe and also fledgling groups in East Asia. Three of the postdocs who gave talks were
trained in Europe, namely Sandon, Gadbled and Hohloch. We also invited several other
women from abroad. This cross fertilization is very important.
Evaluation of the components of the program
The scientific quality was excellent. The hour lecturers gave four different but very good talks. The
half hour lectures were also all very interesting, and gave younger women a chance to present their
work.
We tried to create a friendly atmosphere in the lecture hall to encourage discussion and questions.
For example, the lecturers all gave brief descriptions of their careers to date, so that the audience
would know a little about them. Senior members of the audience asked questions and made
comments to encourage the others. This seemed to work well.
Also the attempt to facilitate communication between the equivariant group and the symplectic
topologists seemed to work. There was some meeting of interests during the Connections itself;
Susan Tolman’s talk was well received, and Olga Buse’s short talk was on a related subject. Later
on in the Introductory workshop there were many discussions, for example between Yael Karshon
and Katrin Wehrheim about the analytic issues in the theory of J -holomorphic curves. Megumi
Harada told me that she learnt a lot during this workshop, and is very excited about coming in the
spring.
The dinner was definitely worthwhile. One participant (who had earlier expressed some scepticism
about events just for women) told me that she had met someone at the dinner whom she would
not otherwise have talked to and that was valuable.
Another participant told me during the Introductory Workshop how useful the Connections had
been. She said that at a large conference one tends to talk to people one knows, and this gave her
a chance to get to know several people. A third told me how illuminating the panel discussion had
been; she realised that problems/concerns she had thought hers alone were shared by many others.
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