Arvind Ayyer:  Down the rabbit hole of Alternating Sign Matrices
	Chair: Krishna Maddaly

	Abstract: Starting with a formula for the determinant of a matrix
	due to Lewis Carroll, we will motivate the definition of alternating
	sign matrices. Enumerating them was one of the major open problems
	in combinatorics during the last two decades of the past century.  
	We will go through some of the ideas leading to the proof of their
	enumeration.  Along the way, we will meet some of the main players in
	the story such as descending plane partitions, totally symmetric self-
	complementary plane partitions and fully packed loop configurations.