roe@math.psu.edu
First talk: 2pm
It has recently become clear that the key common ingredient in various proofs of the Novikov conjecture is a kind of `large-scale' or `metric' amenability of discrete groups. In this talk I will give functorial constructions for producing metric spaces which are not large-scale amenable, and show how they lead to counterexamples to isomorphism conjectures for the assembly map. (Joint with E. Guentner and N. Higson)
Second talk: 3.30pm
I will explain the construction of an exact sequence of C*-algebras whose associated K-theory sequence is an analytic counterpart to the surgery exact sequence which describes high-dimensional manifold structures within a given homotopy type. (Joint with N. Higson)