NATO Advanced Study Institute
Special Functions 2000:
Current Perspective and Future Directions

Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.
May 29 to June 9,  2000

Scientific Program

• Objective of the ASI: to summarize results in special functions and their diverse applications obtained over the last three decades and to discuss future directions. The Advanced Study Institute aims to bring together researchers in all main areas of special functions and applications to present recent developments in the theory, review the accomplishments in the past decades, and chart directions for research in the new millennium.
• Topics: Orthogonal polynomials and special functions in one and several variables, asymptotics, continued fractions, applications to number theory, combinatorics and mathematical physics, integrable systems, harmonic analysis and quantum groups, Painleve classification, and others.
• Dates and location: The Advanced Study Institute will be held on the campus of the Arizona State University. Lectures will begin at 8:00 am on Monday, May 29, 2000, and end at approximately 3 pm on Friday, June 9, 2000. Participants would normally arrive on Sunday, May 28, and depart the Saturday, June 10. View map.
• Plenary and Special Invited Lecturers: Plenary talks will be given by G. Andrews, R. Askey, B. Berndt, P. Deift, C. Dunkl, A. Grünbaum, M.E.H. Ismail, A. Kitaev, E. Koelink, T. Koornwinder, C. Krattenthaler, S. Milne, O. Njastad, K. Ono, M. Rahman, S. Ruijsenaars, V. Spiridonov, D. Stanton, J. Stokman, S. K. Suslov, V. N. Tolstoy, L. Vinet, R. Wong, and A. Zhedanov. The plenary talks will be in the form of broadly accessible survey lectures or series of such lectures. The plenary talks will be given in the mornings. View schedule of the plenary talks.
• Computer Algebra Systems and Special Functions on the Web: There will be a special presentation and tutorial on Special Functions in Mathematica 4.0 by O. Marichev and M. Trott (Mathematica, Wolfram Research). C. Krattenthaler will demonstrate his Mathematica packages HYP and HYPQ. D. Lozier will give a talk on the project Digital Library of Mathematical Functions: A New Web-based Compendium on Special Functions.
• Invited Talks: Some people have been invited to give one hour or 30 minute talks on a conference on special functions and their applications which will run concurrently with the NATO ASI. Invited one hour talks will be given by A. Garsia, L. Haine, D. Leites, M. Noumi, G. Olshanski, H. Rosengren,  P. Terwilliger, W. Van Assche, and J. Wimp. View schedule of the invited one hour talks. 30 minutes talks will take place in the afternoons in two or three parallel sessions. View list of confirmed participants. View schedule of 30 minutes talks.
• Contributed Talks: We can accommodate a limited number of contributed talks of 30 minutes length on a conference on special functions and their applications which will run concurrently with the NATO ASI. To request a slot for a contributed talk, please submit an abstract following the application procedures below. View schedule of 30 minutes talks.
• Future Directions and Open Problem Session: There will be a discussion of future directions and an open problem session on Friday, June 9. Everybody is welcome to participate. Please contact Dick Askey askey@math.wisc.edu with your proposals if you would like to take part in this program. As a result of this discussion we are planning to submit somewhere an article about future directions of the subject written by a team of authors.
• Proceedings: The plenary and special invited lectures of the Advanced Study Institute "Special Functions 2000: Current Perspective and Future Directions" will be published as a book in the NATO Science Series by Kluwer Academic Publishers. The deadline for submission of detailed abstracts of plenary or special invited talks is May 15, 2000. The final version of the manuscript should be submitted by August 1, 2000. Please make special arrangements with Sergei Suslov as soon as possible if you need more time. Kluwer Book Stylefiles/Templates can be found at http://kapis.www.wkap.nl/kaphtml.htm/BOOKSTYLES. All one hour invited speakers on the conference on special functions and their applications which will run concurrently with the NATO ASI will be invited to submit a paper, based on their talk at the conference, for the conference proceedings. Procedures for submitting a paper for these proceedings,  a deadline for submission, and a publisher have not yet been finalized and will be announced later.