Given a smooth cobordism with an almost complex structure, one can ask whether it is realized as a Liouville cobordism, that is, an exact symplectic manifold whose primitive induces a contact structure on the boundary. We show that this is always the case, as long as the positive and negative boundaries are both nonempty. The contact structure on the negative boundary will always be overtwisted in this construction, but for dimensions larger than 4 we show that the positive boundary can be chosen to have any given contact structure. In dimension 4 we show that this cannot always be the case, due to obstructions from gauge theory.[-]

An old open question in symplectic dynamics asks whether all normalized symplectic capacities coincide on convex domains. I will discuss this question and show that the answer is positive if we restrict the attention to domains which are close enough to a ball. The proof is based on a “quasi-invariant” normal form in Reeb dynamics, which has also implications about geodesics in the space of contact forms equipped with a Banach-Mazur pseudo-metric. This talk is based on a joined work with Gabriele Benedetti and Oliver Edtmair.[-]