This conference is an initiative of Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica and is scientifically co-organized by School of Graduate Studies ``Galileo Galilei'', Pisa.

In the last decades, the study of braid groups has enlightened many deep relations among several current research fields in geometry and topology. Explicitly introduced by Artin in 1925, the concept of braid has recently turned out to be of great interest in Representation Theory, Singularity Theory, Combinatorics, Geometric Group theory, Knot Theory, and Low-dimensional Topology.

The aim of the conference is to bring together some among the leading mathematicians working on areas related to braid groups. The main topics will include: Coxeter groups, Artin groups, arrangements of hyperplanes, configuration spaces, moduli spaces, "wonderful" models, generalized hypergeometric functions, combinatorics of lattices, matroids, polytopes, mapping class groups, knots and links, 3-manifolds, geometrization.

Due to the emphasis put on the existing links among different research areas, the conference is also thought as a proper occasion for young researchers to be introduced to fundamental techniques and recent developements in braids, low-dimensional topology and related topics.

List of speakers:

A. Bjorner C. Blanchet M. Boileau K. Bromberg R. Budney F. Callegaro D. Canary A. Cattabriga Y. Choi D. Cohen F. Cohen P. Dehornoy G. Denham A. Dimca E. Feichtner C. Gordon A. Henderson

C. Hodgson T. Kohno F. Luo A. Mednykh B. Martelli S. Papadima L. Paris B. Perron E. Pervova J. Porti C. Procesi R. Randell D. Sinha A. Suciu H. Terao A. Varchenko S. Yuzvinski