Almost non-negative curvature, what's new?

We will review some classical problems in Differential Geometry, which lead us to work with manifolds with almost non-negative curvature. In particular, we will explain during the talk why it is natural to wonder weather for these manifolds a topological invariant called $\hat A$-genus vanishes (this question was proposed by John Lott in 1997). We will provide a positive answer by investigating sequences of spin manifolds with lower sectional curvature bound, upper diameter bound and the property that the Dirac operator is not invertible. As a key ingredient of the proof we prove a generalization (under weaker curvature assumptions) of the renowned theorem by Gromov about almost flat manifolds. This is joint work with Burkhard Wilking.