The Stein-Tomas restriction theorem says that the Fourier transform of a function in L^p(R^n) restricts to an L^2 function on the unit sphere, for p in some range [1, 2(n+1)/(n+3)]. I will discuss geometric generalizations of this result, by interpreting it as a property of the spectral measure of the Laplace operator on R^n, and then generalizing to the Laplace-Beltrami operator on certain complete Riemannian manifolds. It turns out that dynamical properties of the geodesic flow play a crucial role in determining whether a restriction-type theorem holds for these manifolds.

By a "billiard" I mean a bounded plane domain D, with smooth (enough) boundary. Quantum billiards is the study of properties of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on D, i.e. solutions of $\Delta u = Eu$, where $u$ is a function on D vanishing at the boundary, $\Delta$ is the Laplacian on D and $E$ is a real number, in the limit as $E \to \infty$. This large-E limit is the "classical limit" in which eigenfunctions exhibit behaviour related to the classical billiard system (a billiard ball moving around inside D, bouncing elastically off the boundary). I will talk about Quantum Ergodicity, which is the property that "most of" the eigenfunctions become uniformly distributed in D, asymptotically as $E \to \infty$, i.e. they are the same size, on average, in all parts of the domain D; and the stronger property of Quantum Unique Ergodicity, which is the same property with the words "most of" deleted.

Turbulence is characterised by three-dimensional unsteady fluid motion over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. It is important in many problems of technological and scientific interest, such as drag reduction, energy production and climate prediction. In this talk, I will explain why turbulent flows are difficult to predict and describe a modern mathematical model of turbulence based on a random collection of fluid vortices.

A basic example of a Hopf algebra is a group algebra: it is the vector space having the group as basis and having multiplication linearly extending that of the group. We can start with a category instead of a group, form the free vector space on the set of its morphisms, and define multiplication to be composition when possible and zero when not. The multiplication has an identity if the category has finitely many objects; this is a basic example of a weak bialgebra. It is a weak Hopf algebra when the category is a groupoid. Group algebras are also Frobenius algebras. We shall generalize weak bialgebras and Frobenius algebras to the context of monoidal categories and describe some of their theory using the geometry of string diagrams.

Vector spaces and linear functions form our paradigmatic monoidal category. The concepts underpinning linear algebra admit definitions, operations and constructions with analogues in many other parts of mathematics. We shall see how to generalize much of linear algebra to the context of monoidal categories. Traditional examples of such categories are obtained by replacing vector spaces by linear representations of a given compact group or by sheaves of vector spaces. More recent examples come from low-dimensional topology, in particular, from knot theory where the linear functions are replaced by braids or tangles. These geometric monoidal categories are often free in an appropriate sense, a fact that can be used to obtain algebraic invariants for manifolds.