Nairobi workshops in Algebraic Geometry

Chiara Bonadiman, Jared Ongaro, Diletta Martinelli and Balazs Szendroi: Live and remote: Nairobi workshops in algebraic geometry, EMS Magazine, June 2022

2023 Workshop


Dates: 3-7 July 2023


Christophe Ritzenthaler (CIMPA/Université de Nice) gave a series of lectures on the geometry of plane (not necessarily smooth) curves and some arithmetic results related to their maximal number of points over finite fields. Restricting to smooth curves, the cases of degree 1, 2, and, using some experiments with Magma, degree 3 (elliptic curves) were studied. Applications to cryptography and coding theory were also discussed. Finally the speaker sketched a proof of the fact that the asymptotic proportion of elliptic curves over F_q with q+1 points goes to 0 when q goes to infinity. 


Supported by CIMPA. 

2022 Workshop


Dates: 26-28 October 2022


Balazs Szendroi (University of Vienna) gave a series of lectures entitled "Algebraic Geometry through examples". Presentations were also given by Nairobi students Peter Oluoch, Frederick Koech and Benson Kipng'ong'o


Supported by the University of Vienna


Link to a paper paper on Biochemical reaction networks by Alicia Dickenstein


2021 Workshop 


Dates: 23-31 August 2021


The event took place online, virtually hosted by the Department of Mathematics, Chiromo Campus, University of Nairobi


The event was dedicated to the memory of Professor Marco Andrea Garuti


The event was partly sponsored by the University of Trento, Italy. It was organised in collaboration with the Abram Gannibal Project


Organizers: Jared Ongaro (University of Nairobi), Diletta Martinelli (University of Amsterdam), Balazs Szendroi (University of Oxford)


Three mini-courses with several exercise sessions were given

     Balazs Szendroi (Oxford): Computational Algebraic Geometry with Macaulay 2

     Danilo Lewanski (IHES Paris): Hurwitz theory

     Diletta Martinelli (Univeristy of Amsterdam): An introduction to toric varieties


Joint talks with the African Mathematical Seminar were given by senior speakers Diane Maclagan (University of Warwick) and Bernd Sturmfels (MPI Leipzig/UC Berkeley)


Teaching assistants were Aurelio Carlucci, University of Oxford; Bianca Gouthier (University of Bordeaux), Margherita Pagano (Univerity of Leiden), Chiara Bonadiman (University of Trento)


2019 Workshop

Dates: 2-11 September 2019


Organizers: Jared Ongaro, University of Nairobi; Balazs Szendroi, University of Oxford


Main speakers: Dominic Joyce FRS, University of Oxford; Miles Reid FRS, University of Warwick


The workshop consisted of lecture courses given by Prof Joyce and Prof Reid, accompanied by examples classes lead by doctoral students, and some research talks


Some of Prof Joyce's course material can be found HERE


The 2019 workshop was supported by a grant to the Centre for Quantum Geometry of Moduli Spaces at Aarhus University, Denmark, funded by Danish National Research Foundation, alongside continued support from partner institutions: University of Oxford , University of Warwick and  University of Nairobi


2018 Workshop

Pre-workshop school: 21-24 August 2018, Workshop: 27-31 August 2018

Location: Department of Mathematics, Chiromo Campus, University of Nairobi

Workshop organizers: Damian Maingi (University of Nairobi), Diletta Martinelli (University of Edinburgh), Jared Ongaro (University of Nairobi), Balazs Szendroi (University of Oxford)

Organizers of the pre-workshop week: Aurelio Carlucci (University of Oxford),  Alberto Cazzaniga (Stellenbosch University/AIMS South Africa), Diletta Martinelli (University of Edinburgh)

The workshop was organised in a partnership of the Nairobi Algebraic Geometry Group,  the University of Oxford, the Africa Oxford Initiative and the Clay Mathematics Institute. Further support has been received from IMU CDC

Workshop speakers: Jim Bryan, University of British Columbia, Canada; Alessio Corti, Imperial College London, UK; Laura Costa, University of Barcelona, Spain; Mbolo Esoye, Northwestern, USA; Marco Garuti, University of Padova and AIMS-Cameroon; David Ssevviiri, Makerere University, Uganda


2017 Workshop

Dates: 14-16 June 2017 

This was an activity organized around visits by Ran Tessler and Balazs Szendroi to the University of Nairobi. The visits were supported by the Institute of Theoretical Studies, ETH Zurich and the University of Oxford. Two mini-courses were given


Ran Tessler (Zurich): Moduli of curves and Witten's conjecture


Balazs Szendroi (Oxford): Introduction to moduli problems and moduli spaces


2016 Workshop

Dates: 8-11 August 2016


Venue: Chiromo Campus, University of Nairobi


Speakers included Enrico Fatighenti, Sara Muhvic and Miles Reid from the University of Warwick, and David Ssevviiri from Makerere University


Organizers: Gavin Brown (Warwick), Damian Maingi and Jared Ongaro (Nairobi) and Balazs Szendroi (Oxford)


Supported by a MARM grant from the London Mathematical Society, and by the Universities of Nairobi and Warwick


2015 Workshop


Dates: 10-13 August 2015


Organizers: Gavin Brown (Warwick), Damian Maingi (Nairobi), Jared Ongaro (Nairobi), Balazs Szendroi (Oxford)


Gavin Brown (University of Warwick): Riemann-Roch and graded rings I-II

Ben Davison (EPFL Lausanne): The cohomology of the space of semistable representations of a quiver I-II

Andre Saint Eudes Mialebama Bouesso (AIMS SA): Groebner bases over some quotient rings

Damian Maingi (University of Nairobi): Vector bundles associated to monads on multiprojective spaces

Renzo Cavalieri (Colorado State University): From Hurwitz Numbers to Tropical Geometry I-II

David Stern: Algebraic geometry in Africa? (talk and discussion)

Balazs Szendroi (University of Oxford): Hilbert schemes of points on surfaces I-II

Jared Ongaro (University of Nairobi): Plane Hurwitz numbers

Ben Kikwai (ICTP): Refined node polynomials via long edge graphs

Praise Adeyemo (University of Ibadan): Cohomological Consequences of the Pattern Map