John Meier, Lafayette College

Abstract:
Jacques Tits explored and then defined the notion of a building in the 1960s. They are combinatorial objects, which have proven to be of broad utility in geometric approaches to both finite and infinite group theory. I will help everyone to "recall" the definition, and then explore some of the ways in which buildings can be realized geometrically. The goal will be to understand the statement of a recent asymptotic cohomology computation (joint with Davis, Dymara, Janusciewicz and Okun) as well as having at least a vague understanding of the techniques involved in its proof.