There will be a Group Actions Seminar at the University of Sydney this week, on Thursday 28 March. The speakers will be Anne Thomas (Sydney) and Stefan Friedl (Cologne). Titles and abstracts are below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thursday 28 March Time: 12 noon Location: Carslaw 707A, University of Sydney Speaker: Anne Thomas (University of Sydney) Title: Lattices, polyhedral complexes and cubulations Abstract: Let X be a locally finite polyhedral complex, such as a tree, a product of trees, a Davis complex or a building. Then G = Aut(X) is naturally a locally compact group, and we can compare lattices in G to lattices in Lie groups. I will survey the impact of recent work of Agol and Wise on the study of lattices in G. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thursday 28 March Time: 3pm Location: Carslaw 707A, University of Sydney Speaker: Stefan Friedl (University of Cologne) Title: The virtual fibering theorem for 3-manifolds Abstract: Agol and Wise showed that any hyperbolic 3-manifold admits a finite cover which is a surface bundle over S^1. We will give an alternative account of one of the key steps in the proof of this theorem. This is joint work with Takahiro Kitayama. ----------------------------------------------------------------