In the past twenty/thirty years, the geometry and topology of low dimensional manifolds have seen major developments. These developments also have direct inputs from theoretical physics, for example from quantum field theories and string theory. The Ricci flow, introduced by Hamilton, and its use by Perelman for the proof of the Poincare Conjecture has been one of the major advances in this area in recent times. A generalization of the Poincare Conjecture is the Geometrization Conjecture of Thurston, which proposed special Riemannian geometries for all compact 3-manifolds. It is also claimed to be proved by the Ricci Flow Techniques. A special case of Haken manifolds was already proved independently by very different techniques coming from Teichmuller Theory. There will be special lectures on topics in Riemann surfaces, quasiconformal mappings, Kleinian groups and Teichmullar theory.