Tropical Geometry at MSRI (Forschungssemester)
Final Report Abstract
The research grant “Tropical Geometry at MSRI (Forschungssemester)” was intended to enable me, on the one hand, to concentrate on my role as (communicating) organizer of the research program “Tropical Geometry” at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in the fall of 2009 and, on the other hand, to pursue my own research projects in an ideal environment while my teaching duties at home were covered by a Vertretungsprofessur. The MSRI program enjoyed spectacularly high attendance by both experts and young researchers in the field. In retrospective, it provided a crucial platform for the consolidation of fundamental concepts in a young field and the development of new and lasting research directions. The post-doc mentoring program that I initiated and maintained was highly recognized in the field, and it certainly contributed to a number of post-docs successfully making their ways to tenure-track or permanent positions at strong research departments. Personally, I was able to successfully pursue a project on explaining geometrically an isomorphism phenomenon linking wonderful arrangement models to toric geometry. Moreover, a new and ongoing project on critical loci of master functions was initiated jointly with Michael Falk (Northern Arizona University).
