I will discuss results of three different types in geometry and topology.(1) General vanishing and rigidity theorems of elliptic genera proved by using modular forms, Kac-Moody algebras and vertex operator algebras.(2) The computations of intersection numbers of the moduli spaces of flat connections on a Riemann surface by using heat kernels.(3) The mirror principle about counting curves in Calabi-Yau and general projective manifolds by using hypergeometric series.

We briefly survey our recent results about the Mumford goodness of several canonical metrics on the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces, including the Weil-Petersson metric, the Ricci metric, the Perturbed Ricci metric and the Kahler-Einstein metric. We prove the dual Nakano negativity of the Weil-Petersson metric. As applications of these results we deduce certain important results about the <i>L</i> ²-cohomology groups of the logarithmic tangent bundle over the compactified moduli spaces.

By studying modular invariance properties of some characteristic forms, we prove some new anomaly cancellation formulas which generalize the Han-Zhang and Han-Liu-Zhang anomaly cancellation formulas

By using Yau's Schwarz lemma and the Quillen determinant line bundles, several results about fibered algebraic surfaces and the moduli spaces of curves are improved and reproved.

We derive an effective recursion for Witten's r-spin intersection numbers, using Witten's conjecture relating r-spin numbers to the Gel'fand-Dikii hierarchy (Theorem 4.1). Consequences include closed-form descriptions of the intersection numbers (for example, in terms of gamma functions: Propositions 5.2 and 5.4, Corollary 5.5). We use these closed-form descriptions to prove Harer-Zagier's formula for the Euler characteristic of M_ {g, 1}. Finally in Section 6, we extend Witten's series expansion formula for the Landau-Ginzburg potential to study r-spin numbers in the small phase space in genus zero. Our key tool is the calculus of formal pseudodifferential operators, and is partially motivated by work of Brezin and Hikami.