Speaker: Professor Gang Tian from Princeton University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Tian Time: July 22nd, 2:30PM-3:30PM Place: UNSW, RC(Red Center) 4082 Lunch (with the speaker): we meet at UNSW (the East Wing entrance of Red Centre, under the big fig tree) at 1PM, Friday Title: New Geometric Flows Abstract: Curvature flows have played a very important role in recent developments in geometry and topology, such as, resolution of Thurston’s Geometrization Conjecture for 3-manifolds by using Ricci flow. In this talk, I will discuss two new curvature flows which generalize the Ricci flow and show how they can be applied to study symplectic manifolds and a still mysterious class of complex surfaces. I will also discuss the relation of these flows to the renormalization group flows in physics. This will be an expository talk and based on my joint works with J. Streets.