"...Until a few years ago, you found everywhere a strong tendency to specialization: now you see much straddling between branches of mathematics that used to be tight, separate compartements. People who can work in more than one field, and who are able to see analogies between seemingly disparate concepts, will be the ones who set the pace for the future..." (Gian-Carlo Rota in Mathematics, Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, <<Los Alamos Science>>, n.12 - 1985)
The interrelationships of algebraic combinatorics with other branches of mathematics, as well as other disciplines, have seen an increase of interest, as it is also confirmed by the recent tradition of our yearly meetings. As it was the case with the previous conferences, the present one has the following objectives:
To achieve our objectives, we rely on the presence of two very well known lecturers: Martin Aigner and Dominque Perrin, who will give a self-contained cycle of lectures.
This conference will be devoted to the memory of Gian-Carlo Rota, untimely dead in April 1999. He has been the opening invited speaker in the first edition of our meetings so it is only too natural to celebrate his leading figure by inviting a selection of very qualified speakers close to him. We are planning to collect a selection of scientific contributions that will be pubblished as a tribute to Gian-Carlo Rota.