Speaker: Alexander Kupers (University of Toronto)

Abstract of Minicourse: We will give a detailed overview of recent progress in computing the rational homotopy groups of the topological group of diffeomorphisms of high dimensional discs, with a focus on even dimensions including the topics: Characteristic classes for smooth disc bundles; Fundamental diagrams relating diffeomorphisms groups; Self-embeddings of high-dimensional manifolds; Torelli groups of highdimensional
manifolds.