NAME: Robert Gustafson ADDRESS: Dept. of Math, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 EMAIL ADDRESS: rgustaf@math.tamu.edu TITLE OF TALK: rational symmetric functions on $BC_n$ ABSTRACT OF TALK: We discuss a new kind of symmetric function associated to the root system $BC_n$ generalizing a number of previous functions such as Schur, Macdonald, Biedenharn and Okounkov. These functions have a number of important properties including analogues of Cauchy identity, Weyl dimension formula, location of zeroes an poles. They also occur in remarkable multivariate $q$-series identities generalizing classical well-poised summation and transformation theorems. ===========================================================