Current Trends in Representation Theory of Finite Groups

It is over a century since Frobenius initiated the study of group representations. One feature of the subject in his day was the interplay between the general theory and the study of the important special groups (for Frobenius, the symmetric groups and PSL(2, p) for example) and this connection has continued to be a central theme of the field ever since, with ideas, questions and motivation flowing two ways. The conference exhibited this connection in many ways and the program displays the current work on general theories and the study of the special groups, mainly the reflection groups, finite groups of Lie type, and other related groups. This latter work divides into the study of the representation theory for the natural characteristic and the cross characteristic case, and we shall organize the report along these lines.