Dear All, We are delighted to present the MaPSS Seminar topic of Monday 4th April; please see the abstract below. **From this Semester the Seminar will always run on Monday, at 5:00pm in 535A** Following the talk, there will be pizza on offer. Speaker: James Diaz (Cambdridge University) Title: Handlebodies and the high-dimensional Poincare conjecture Abstract: The notion of a handlebody is a combinatorial way to describe a manifold, analogous to the idea of a cell complex. One of the reasons they are useful is that natural topological operations performed on handlebodies translate very directly to algebraic operations performed on chain complexes, reducing problems in topology to simple linear algebra. In this talk, weâll explore some basic manipulations of handlebodies and their links to algebraic invariants. Time permitting, we will illustrate the power of this technique by outlining (a version of) Smaleâs proof of the high-dimensional Poincare conjecture. Some exposure to algebraic topology is helpful (in particular, familiarity with cell complexes and cellular homology) but not assumed. Supervisors, please encourage your students to attend. Thanks, MaPSS Organizers