15th International Symposium on Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications

Hagenberg, Austria, July 22-26, 2019.

The 15th International Symposium on Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications (OPSFA) took place in Hagenberg (near Linz) in Austria, from July 22 to July 26, 2019. It was organized by the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation (RISC) of the Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) and the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). The website of the conference contains all the useful information. Here is a group picture.

The Scientific Committee consisted of Walter Van Assche, Diego Dominici, Kathy Driver, Galina Filipuk, Frank Garvan, Mourad Ismail, Doron Lubinsky, Zeinab Mansour, Francisco Marcellán, Bruno Salvy, Michael Schlosser, and Thomas Trogdon. The local organizers were Christoph Koutschan and Peter Paule. 

The plenary speakers were

  1. Christian Krattenthaler (Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria): Chen Wang's proof of the Borwein conjecture (slides)
  2. Mikhail Sodin (Tel Aviv University, Israel): Three tales from one pocket (slides)
  3. Alan Sokal (University College London, UK and New York University, USA): Coefficientwise Hankel-total positivity (slides)
  4. Veronika Pillwein (Johannes Kepler Universität, Linz, Austria): Orthogonal polynomials, special functions, and algortithms (slides)
  5. Thomas Bothner (Gábor Szegö lecture) (King's College London, UK): What is ... a Riemann-Hilbert problem (slides)
  6. Luc Vinet (Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Université de Montréal, Canada): State revival in spin networks, graphs and orthogonal polynomials (slides)
  7. Irina Nenciu (University of Illinois, Chicago, USA): On orthogonal polynomials and the long-time behavior of completely integrable systems (slides)
  8. Armin Straub (University of South Alabama, USA): Negative thinking and polynomial analogs (slides)
  9. Peter Clarkson (University of Kent, Canterbury, UK): Rational solutions of Painlevé equations (slides)

The contributed talks were organized in 12 topical sessions (mini-symposia):

  1. Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Functional Equations (W. Van Assche, G. Filipuk, Y. Haraoka) 
  2. Hypergeometric Functions (D. Dominici)
  3. Trends on Orthogonal Polynomials in Weighted Sobolev Spaces (F. Marcellán, J.J. Moreno-Balcázar)
  4. Multivariate Special Functions Related to Lie Algebras (M. Schlosser)
  5. Multiple Orthogonal Polynomials and Hermite-Padé Approximation (W. Van Assche)
  6. Symbolic Computation and Special Functions (M. Kauers, V. Pillwein)
  7. Recent Trends in Asymptotics (G. Nemes)
  8. Asymptotics via Non-Standard Orthogonality (A. Martínez-Finkelshtein, G. Silva, M. Yattselev)
  9. Extremal Polynomials and Almost Periodicity (J.S. Christiansen, B. Eichinger, T. VandenBoom)
  10. Potential Theory and Applications to Orthogonal Polynomials and Minimal Energy (P. Dragnev, E.B. Saff)
  11. Developments in q-Series and the Theory of Partitions (A. Uncu)
  12. General Session for Contributed Talks

There were also posters on display.  

The Gabor Szegő prize was awarded (fifth time) to Thomas Bothner. A Life Time Achievement award was presented to Richard Askey, who unfortunately was not able to be present.

The social program included a welcome reception in the castle of Hagenberg, an excursion to Freistadt with a visit to the Freistädter brewery and a conference dinner in the restaurant Zum Goldenen Hirschen, and an organ concert in the church of Hagenberg by Christian Krattenthaler.

The program booklet and the timetable were available online. The proceedings are be published as a special issue in Integral Transforms and Special Functions 32 (2021), issue 5-8.