This volume contains seven chapters based on lectures given by invited speakers at two May 2010 workshops held at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.

The volume is based on a course, ``Geometric Models for Noncommutative Algebras'' taught by Professor Weinstein at Berkeley. Noncommutative geometry is the study of noncommutative algebras as if they were algebras of functions on spaces, for example, the commutative algebras associated to affine algebraic varieties, differentiable manifolds, topological spaces, and measure spaces. In this work, the authors discuss several types of geometric objects (in the usual sense of sets with structure) that are closely related to noncommutative algebras. Central to the discussion are symplectic and Poisson manifolds, which arise when noncommutative algebras are obtained by deforming commutative algebras. The authors also give a detailed study of groupoids (whose role in noncommutative geometry has been stressed by Connes) as well as of Lie algebroids, the infinitesimal approximations to differentiable groupoids. Featured are many interesting examples, applications, and exercises. The book starts with basic definitions and builds to (still) open questions. It is suitable for use as a graduate text. An extensive bibliography and index are included.

Proceedings of the Ascona Meeting, June 1996

This volume is a collection of articles by speakers at the Poisson 2006 conference. The program for Poisson 2006 was an overlap of topics that included deformation quantization, generalized complex structures, differentiable stacks, normal forms, and group-valued moment maps and reduction.

This Seminar began in Moscow in November 1943 and has continued without interruption up to the present. We are happy that with this vol ume, Birkhiiuser has begun to publish papers of talks from the Seminar. It was, unfortunately, difficult to organize their publication before 1990. Since 1990, most of the talks have taken place at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Parallel seminars were also held in Moscow, and during July, 1992, at IRES in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. Speakers were invited to submit papers in their own style, and to elaborate on what they discussed in the Seminar. We hope that readers will find the diversity of styles appealing, and recognize that to some extent this reflects the diversity of styles in a mathematical society. The principal aim was to have interesting talks, even if the topic was not especially popular at the time. The papers listed in the Table of Contents reflect some of the rich variety of ideas presented in the Seminar. Not all the speakers submit ted papers. Among the interesting talks that influenced the seminar in an important way, let us mention, for example, that of R. Langlands on per colation theory and those of J. Conway and J. McKay on sporadic groups. In addition, there were many extemporaneous talks as well as short discus sions.

Noncommutative Geometry is one of the most deep and vital research subjects of present-day Mathematics. Its development, mainly due to Alain Connes, is providing an increasing number of applications and deeper insights for instance in Foliations, K-Theory, Index Theory, Number Theory but also in Quantum Physics of elementary particles. The purpose of the Summer School in Martina Franca was to offer a fresh invitation to the subject and closely related topics; the contributions in this volume include the four main lectures, cover advanced developments and are delivered by prominent specialists.