Michael Temkin  

Title: Logarithmic resolution of singularities

Abstract:
I will talk about a recent series of works with Abramovich and
Wlodarczyk, where a logarithmic analogue of the classical resolution
of singularities of schemes in characteristic zero is constructed.
Already for usual schemes, the logarithmic algorithm is faster and
more functorial, though as a price one has to work with log smooth
ambient orbifolds rather than smooth ambient manifolds. But the main
achievement is that essentially the same algorithm resolves log
schemes and even morphisms of log schemes, yielding a major
generalization of various semistable reduction theorems.