The idea of the seminar is to bring together people from the group in geometry and singularities at the University of Toronto (including Ed Bierstone, Askold Khovanskii, Grisha Mihalkin and Pierre Milman) and the model theory group at McMaster University (Bradd Hart, Deirdre Haskell, Patrick Speissegger and Matt Valeriote).

As we discovered during the programs in Algebraic Model Theory Program and the Singularity Theory and Geometry Program at the Fields Institute in 1996-97, geometers and model theorists have many common interests. The goal of this seminar is to further explore interactions between the areas. It served as the main seminar for the program on O-minimal structures and real analytic geometry, which focussed on such interactions arising around Hilbert's 16th problem.

The seminar meets once a month at the Fields Institute.