The fourth annual Boston University/Keio University Workshop was held from September 15–19 at Boston University. The workshop theme rotates topics among mathematics areas of interest to the faculty at both institutions; the theme for 2014 was Dynamical Systems. The workshop brought together dynamical systems researchers from around the world: the registrants were from 17 US institutions, 3 Japanese institutions, and 7 other international institutions. They were composed of 20 faculty members, 8 postdocs, and 31 graduate students, and the workshop provided a relaxed environment in which senior faculty, junior faculty and graduate students could interact. An interactive open problems session on Wednesday afternoon was particularly effective in opening up dialog among the participants.

The participants from Keio University, Osaka University, and Kyoto University.

The talks covered a range of dynamical systems topics. There was a series of talks on complex dynamics, including the fascinating pictures of Cantor bouquets and Sierpinski carpets, as well as an interactive demonstration of symmetries in the generation of Julia sets. Another set of talks focused on real-dynamical systems techniques to study the existence and stability of solutions to differential equations. These talks often had applications to patterns and other coherent structures observed in the physical world. Other topics included variational methods for n-body problems, braids, shift-dynamics, and tilings, to name a few.

Enthusiastic audience after an inspiring week of talks.

But perhaps the most memorable event of the week was the delicious conference dinner at Lucia's Ristorante in the North End of Boston. The international participants got a little taste of American culture: the north end of Boston is the site of revolutionary-war era sites, including Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church. Italian delicacies included an antipasto platter, mussels, eggplant parmesan, veal, and, of course, cannolis.

Indulging in delicious Italian food at Lucia's Ristorante in Boston's North End.

Kelly McQuighan