"Transverse Fano Structures Ricci Curvature and Einstein Metrics"

We examine special metrics on contact manifolds which define Transverse Fano Structures on the leaf space of the characteristic foliation. Many results concerning existence of special metrics on smooth Kaehler manifolds, such as, for example, Calabi Conjecture, can be extended to this more general case. We then show how transverse Fano geometry can be used to show existence of positive Ricci curvature and Einstein metrics on many odd dimensional manifolds.