Workshop II “Combinatorics & Asymptotics of discrete planar structures” is a workshop of the ESI Thematic program on Statistical Mechanics and Combinatorics of Discrete Planar Structures from 19.-23. October 2026.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together leading experts in the following fields and to discuss recent developments such as the the recently explored connections between alternating sign matrices, Grothendieck polynomials and algebraic geometry or the scaling limits of planar graph structures.
Asymptotics and Combinatorics of Planar Maps and Graphs is a very active field of research, attracting significant interest due to its connections to probability theory, statistical physics, and theoretical computer science.
Enumerative questions on tilings, plane partitions, alternating sign matrices and related objects are notorious for being easy to state but often diffcult to prove. Nowadays the area benefits significantly from its increasing interactions with several other areas where these objects are studied from a di erent point of view such as statistical physics (where alternating sign matrices appear in disguise as the six-vertex model), probability (dimer model), representation theory and algebraic geometry (where alternating sign matrices appear in disguise as bumpless pipe dreams).
These connections offer new opportunities and will be central for the workshop.
This workshop is now fully booked.
Speakers of the workshop:
Marie Albenque (Université Paris Cité)
Arvind Ayyer (Indian Institute of Science)
Mireille Bousquet-Mélou (Université de Bordeaux)
Timothy Budd (Radboud University)
Guillaume Chapuy (Université Paris Cité))
Mihai Ciucu (Indiana University)
Filippo Colomo (Università di Firenze)
Nicolas Curien (Université Paris-Saclay)
Eric Fusy (Université Gustave Eiffel)
Daoji Huang (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Matjaz Konvalinka (University of Ljubljana)
Michael Krivelevich (Tel Aviv University)
Jean-Francois Le Gall (Université Paris-Saclay)
Cyril Marzouk (CNRS & Ecole Polytechnique)
Gregory Miermont (ENS Lyon)
Konstantinos Panagiotou (LMU München)
Greta Panova (University of Southern California)
Leonid Petrov (University of Virginia)
Sigurdur Örn Stéfansson (University of Reykjavík)
Jessica Striker (North Dakota State University)
Benjamin Young (University of Oregon)
The workshop is co-organised by Michael Drmota (TU Wien), Ilse Fischer (University of Vienna) and Benedikt Stufler (TU Wien).
Partial support is acknowledged from the SFB F 1002 “Discrete random structures: enumeration and scaling limits” by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
The support of the following organizations is greatly acknowledged:
