Book excerpt: This volume contains proceedings of two conferences held in Toronto (Canada) and Kozhikode (India) in 2016 in honor of the 60th birthday of Professor Kumar Murty. The meetings were focused on several aspects of number theory: The theory of automorphic forms and their associated L-functions Arithmetic geometry, with special emphasis on algebraic cycles, Shimura varieties, and explicit methods in the theory of abelian varieties The emerging applications of number theory in information technology Kumar Murty has been a substantial influence in these topics, and the two conferences were aimed at honoring his many contributions to number theory, arithmetic geometry, and information technology.--