Benjamin Morris (University of Leeds) – How to make lasagna

Abstract: In order to scandalise the growing number of Italians in this department, I will present an unhinged rant rethinking this well-loved dish. In contrast to more standard recipes, the main ingredient will be a functorial link homology theory in the thickened 3-ball. In fact, my talk will be primarily concerned with unpacking, as much as time allows, the following sentence: “skein lasagna modules are four manifold invariants defined using functoriality of Khovanov-Rosansky homology, which is a categorification of the Jones polynomial”.