Workshop: M Theory in the City

Over ten years ago a fundamental eleven dimension theory was proposed called M theory which unifies all known string theories. Much progress has been made since then in studying this mysterious theory, but so far a truly compelling formulation of M theory has proved elusive. It seems clear that a description using conventional string perturbative methods will not be appropriate, and efforts have instead focussed on exploring the different aspects of the theory which are amenable to study, such as the structure and low energy dynamics of M-branes, non-standard geometries in M theory, the appearance and formulation of dualities, the role of M-branes in entropy counting of black objects and the fundamental symmetries of the theory. All of this work has provided clues as to the nature of M theory, and we believe that it is essential to probe further into this fundamental question.