Geometric Functional Analysis and Applications

Date: 14 August - 15 December 2017

Location: MSRI

Geometric functional analysis lies at the interface of convex geometry, functional analysis and probability. It has numerous applications ranging from geometry of numbers and random matrices in pure mathematics to geometric tomography and signal processing in engineering and numerical optimization and learning theory in computer science.

One of the directions of the program is classical convex geometry, with emphasis on connections with geometric tomography, the study of geometric properties of convex bodies based on information about their sections and projections. Methods of harmonic analysis play an important role here. A closely related direction is asymptotic geometric analysis studying geometric properties of high dimensional objects and normed spaces, especially asymptotics of their quantitative parameters as dimension tends to infinity. The main tools here are concentration of measure and related probabilistic results. Ideas developed in geometric functional analysis have led to progress in several areas of applied mathematics and computer science, including compressed sensing and random matrix methods. These applications as well as the problems coming from computer science will be also emphasised in our program.

Professor William B. Johnson (Texas A&M) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.