Abstract: Embedding group rings into division rings provides methods for tackling problems which superficially seem unrelated. One way of constructing such embeddings (in characteristic 0) is by proving that they satisfy the Atiyah Conjecture. I will give a survey of the status of the Atiyah Conjecture, as well as applications to other problems, and discuss joint work with Sam Fisher on proving the conjecture for congruence subgroups of mapping class groups and outer automorphism groups of RAAGs.