The program consisted of 14 talks in total spread over the two days and included presentations from 9 external speakers as well as members of the Geometric Rigidity group at Lancaster.
Simon Guest (University of Cambridge) presented recent work in designing a new tensegrity structure (currently under construction at University of Kent). The talk focused on the analysis of symmetries and derived counting rules inherent in the design process.
Bill Jackson (Queen Mary University of London) presented two talks, the first on recent work with his PhD student Katharine Clinch on the generic global rigidity of direction-length frameworks; the second on work with John Owen (Siemens PLC) on a matroidal approach to point-line frameworks related to CAD.
James Cruickshank (NUI Galway) spoke about generic 3-rigidity for block and hole graphs (graphs derived from a triangulation of a sphere by punching holes and inserting rigid blocks). This was following by a related talk on 3-rigidity for a partially triangulated torus given by Stephen Power (Lancaster).
The theme continued in a talk by Patrick Fowler (Sheffield) on the rigidity of perforated polyhedral structures. Adil Mughal (Aberystwyth University) spoke about computational aspects of dense packings of spheres in cylinders for given cylinder and sphere diameters. Oleg Karpenkov (University of Liverpool) spoke about ODE's used to describe the flexibility of semi-discrete surfaces.
Anthony Nixon (Lancaster) described the combinatorics of triangle ring networks arising in the rigidity analysis of vitreous silica. Bernd Schulze (Lancaster) presented recent work with Viktoria Kaszatnitzky (Lancaster) on lifting plane pictures with symmetry to polyhedral surfaces and Derek Kitson spoke about progress on developing rigidity theory for non-Euclidean norms.
Short talks were provided by three PhD students. Iila Lijingjiao (University of Cambridge) presented new examples of flexible non-convex polyhedra which have a wider range of motion than existing examples of Connelly and Steffen. Katharine Clinch (QMUL) spoke about work with Bill Jackson on direction-length frameworks and Hakan Guler (QMUL) presented a recent result with Bill Jackson on determining independent components of isostatic frameworks.
The workshop brought together researchers from a range of academic backgrounds with a common interest in geometric rigidity to share their viewpoints, methods and expertise. The talks were diverse yet the quality of the presentations allowed for open discussions across disciplines.
The workshop provided a valuable networking opportunity for PhD students and an opportunity for PhD students to present their work to experts in the field.
The programme and abstracts for the workshop are available on the meeting webpage.
