Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Symplectic geometry has become very important for our understanding of 4-manifolds and exotic structures on them. In this talk, I hope to: 

• Define symplectic structures.
• Go over progress in understanding closed oriented $n$-manifolds (and why 4-manifolds are hard).
• Explain how symplectic geometry fits into 4-manifold topology and finding exotic structures.
• Shed light on the connection between contact and symplectic geometry.
• Go over a construction of symplectic 4-manifolds one might cook up with contact-geometric ideas.