Mission Statement

Motivation

The ACO program is designed to create a synergy between ACO related fields by fostering fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations. We are proposing ACO Threads, a seminar series taylored for and run by ACO students, to help ACO students capitalize on the program's promise. The main goals we hope to accomplish with ACO Threads are as follows:

• Bring the ACO community together
• Help students keep abreast with advanced techniques and topics within ACO related fields
• Keep students in touch with the research being done by ACO students and faculty

Given the breath of knowledge expressed within the ACO student body, we believe that ACO students can serve as fantastic resources to each other. We hope to strengthen the sense of community within the ACO student body by providing a forum, ACO Threads, where ACO students can come together and interact as a learning community.

Due to the expansive nature of ACO fields, it seems difficult, or maybe even impossible, to create a comprehensive curriculum that covers all the topics that ACO students would benefit from. A primary focus of ACO Threads is to fill some of the gaps within the ACO core curriculum in topics for which there is substantial ACO student interest.

As is characteristic of ACO related fields, it is often the hidden connections between the different disciplines that generate exciting new results. We therefore believe that it is of crucial for ACO students to maintain their curiosity and stay connected to the research fellow students and faculty are involved in.

Seminar Dynamics

The content of Threads talks are decided upon via an inclusive ACO community process. The organizing committee actively seeks feedback from the community on what topics students would like to present and see presented. We envision three distinct categories of talks:

• Problems & Topics Talk: present open problems or propose new problems within ACO related fields. Necessary introductory material should be covered. Emphasis should be put on motivating the presented problems and where appropriate illustrating how they connect different ACO fields together. We think that Problems talks are useful in providing an open and discursive environment within which ACO students are exposed to interesting research opportunities.
• Subjects and Techniques Talk (S&T): present advanced techniques and subjects not covered or under covered within the ACO core curriculum. Presenting a research article, introducing a general subject area, or illustrating the use of a particular proof technique are all good examples of S&T talks. S&T talks are organized around student interests which we gauge via student requests and feedback on our discussion board (see community process)
• Student Research Presentation: As a general guideline we propose the following breakdown for a research talk. The presenter should first introduce and motivate the investigated research problem. The main results of the research should be explained and where appropriate proofs should be sketched and the main proof techniques elucidated. Time permitting, the research process should be discussed. By this we intend answering questions of following type: how did the ideas underlying the research evolve? What approaches were tried in resolving the problem? What worked and didn't work with these different approaches? What were the major obstacles that were overcome to resolve the problem? Lastly, future research directions should discussed. We believe this provides a useful venue for ACO students looking to practice presenting their thesis or other research, and helps first and second year students understand the research process as well as keep in touch with what ACO students are doing.

Threads presentations are meant to provide a service to the ACO community. To maximize the effectiveness and impact of each presentation we propose the following general guidelines:

• Talks should be accessible to most or all of the ACO community. One may assume that the subjects covered by the ACO core curriculum are known to the participants, though this may exclude some first year students. Where appropriate an effort should be made to briefly summarize the necessary background material.
• We require that each presenter provide the following: an abstract describing the content of the talk and the main background material used during the talk, a list of references (preferably annotated) pointing to the primary source material and potential followup material for interested students. We also strongly encourage presenters to create a written record, either lecture notes or slides, of the presented material for student reference. All this material will be posted on the Threads website. For talks with strong written support, followup or multi part talks can be envisioned without violating the accessibility criterion.
• A major focus of Threads talks if for ACO students to get to know each other. Therefore, where possible and appropriate, presenters should encourage discussion and active participation from the attendees.
• Lastly, presenters are encouraged to discuss their presentations with members of the organizing committee before their talk.

Community Process

A driving focus of ACO Threads is to engage the ACO community. We actively seek requests from ACO students for talks they are interested in seeing and talks they would like to give. To aid this process we have setup up an ACO Threads discussion board where students can post their requests as well as general ideas or feedback they may have.

The organizing committee takes care of matching talk requests with capable and willing presenters. We overwhelmingly focus on finding student presenters, in keeping with the principle of engaging the ACO community, but we may occassionaly, where appropriate, seek faculty presenters.