The Southwest Center for Arithmetic Geometry was founded in
1997 with funding from an NSF Group Infrastructure Grant by
seven mathematicians working in the southwest: Alex Buium,
Minhyong Kim, Bill McCallum, Wayne Raskind, Dinesh Thakur, Doug
Ulmer, and Felipe Voloch. They were joined in 2002 by Michael
Nakamaye, Bjorn Poonen, and Fernando Rodriguez-Villegas. In
2006, Matt Papanikolas, David Savitt, and William Stein joined
Thakur and Rodriguez-Villegas as organizers, and in 2009,
Rachel Pries joined the team, replacing Stein. From 2012 to 2015,
the organizers were Bryden Cais, Mirela Ciperiani, Matt Papanikolas,
Rachel Pries, and Romyar Sharifi. Alina Bucur and David Zureick-Brown
replaced Papanikolas and Pries in 2015. Hang Xue replaced Sharifi in 2018, and Brandon Levin joined as an organizer in 2019. In 2022, Anthony Várilly-Alvarado replaced Ciperiani, and Renee Bell and Isabel Vogt joined as the main organizers of the Preliminary Arizona Winter School.
The current
organizers are Alina Bucur,
Brandon Levin, Anthony Várilly-Alvarado, Hang Xue, and David Zureick-Brown.
The most important activities of the center are the annual
Arizona Winter School (AWS), held in March at the University of
Arizona, and the Preliminary Arizona Winter School (PAWS), a virtual Fall program on topics related to the upcoming AWS, with an intended audience of advanced undergraduate students and junior graduate students.
The Center is funded by
the National Science Foundation, with additional support provided by the
National Security Agency.
Winter Schools are organized in collaboration with the Clay
Mathematics Institute.
The Arizona Winter School is an intensive five-day-long school in which advanced graduate students work closely with senior faculty and postdoctoral fellows. In contrast to a typical conference at which individual researchers present their work in relative isolation, the AWS features a small number of extended courses on a set of closely related topics. The organizers work hard to ensure significant interaction among all participants. For instance, each speaker is assigned a group of students who work with him or her and a postdoctoral assistant on a research project during the Winter School. These students present the results of their research in a lecture at the end of the meeting. Other students work with a postdoctoral assistant in a problem session related to one or more of the lecture series. Still other students work in study groups, carefully learning the material from one the lecture series together. To facilitate work on the projects, problems, and study groups, speakers, assistants, and students meet in evening working sessions. Participants frequently describe the AWS as a highly intense, but particularly productive, experience.
We have written a guide to the AWS for participants, both speakers and students.
The Center previously sponsored a number of distinguished lectures series. Click here for more information and notes on these lectures. In the past, the grant has provided summer support for graduate students, travel, and computers, including the server that hosts this site. It also supported an AMS special session, “Graduate and postdoctoral education: The Arizona Winter School,” in January 2001 in New Orleans.
The Southwest Center has one Director and four co-Directors. They are:
| Alina Bucur | (UC San Diego, co-Director) |
| Brandon Levin | (Rice University, Director) |
| Anthony Várilly-Alvarado | (Rice University, co-Director) |
| Hang Xue | (University of Arizona, co-Director) |
| David Zureick-Brown | (Emory University, co-Director) |
The preliminary winter school has two additional organizers. They are:
| Renee Bell | (University of Pennsylvania) |
| Isabel Vogt | (Brown University) |
Some of the material on this web site is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Awards 9709662, 0207478, 0602287, 0852464, 1161523, 1504537, 176375, and 1903892, by the National Secutity Agency under awards H98230-19-1-0262 and H98230-21-1-0002, and by the Clay Mathematics Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the National Security Agency.