Date: 7 December 2012, 4:30pm Location: Hempfield High School, Room 213 Speaker: Vasily Dolgushev, Temple University Title: A manifestation of the Grothendieck-Teichmueller group in geometry Abstract. Inspired by Grothendieck's lego-game, Vladimir Drinfeld introduced, in 1990, the Grothendieck-Teichmueller group GRT. This group has interesting links to the absolute Galois group of rationals, moduli of algebraic curves, solutions of the Kashiwara-Vergne problem, and theory of motives. My talk will be devoted to the manifestation of GRT in the extended moduli of algebraic varieties, which was conjectured by Maxim Kontsevich in 1999. My talk is based on a joint paper with Chris Rogers and Thomas Willwacher.