We show that a compact manifold admitting a Killing foliation with positive transverse curvature fibers over finite quotients of spheres or weighted complex projective spaces, provided that the singular foliation defined by the closures of the leaves has maximal dimension. This result is obtained by deforming the foliation into a closed one while maintaining transverse geometric properties, which allows us to apply results from the Riemannian geometry of orbifolds to the space of leaves. We also show that the basic Euler characteristic is preserved by such deformations. Using this fact we prove that a Riemannian foliation of a compact manifold with finite fundamental group and nonvanishing Euler characteristic is closed. As another application we obtain that, for a positively curved Killing foliation of a compact manifold, if the structural algebra has sufficiently large dimension then the basic Euler characteristic is positive.

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A smooth foliation is Riemannian when its leaves are locally equidistant. The closures of the leaves of a Riemannian foliation on a simply connected manifold, or more generally of a Killing foliation, are described by flows of transverse Killing vector fields. This offers significant technical advantages in the study of this class of foliations, which nonetheless includes other important classes, such as those given by the orbits of isometric Lie group actions. Aiming at a broad audience, in this survey we introduce Killing foliations from the very basics, starting with a brief revision of the main objects appearing in this theory, such as pseudogroups, holonomy and basic cohomology. We then review Molino's structural theory for Riemannian foliations and present its transverse counterpart in the theory of complete pseudogroups of isometries, emphasizing the connections between these topics. We also survey some classical results and recent developments in the theory of Killing foliations. Finally, we review some topics in the theory of singular Riemannian foliations and discuss singular Killing foliations, also proposing a new approach to them via holonomy metric pseudogroups and the theory of blow-ups, which possibly opens up a new area of interest. Contents2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 53C12.