An introduction to skein lasagna modules

Introduced by Morrison, Walker, and Wedrich, skein lasagna modules are invariants of four-manifolds with boundary built from link homology theories. A landmark recent result of Ren and Willis showed that these invariants can detect exotic smooth structures on four-manifolds with boundary. This expository talk will introduce some of the key ideas behind the construction and its applications.
Some familiarity with Khovanov homology will be useful, though most of the core ideas will be presented in a way that is accessible without it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​