Supporting young mathematicians in Europe

Irina Bobrova and Anna-Laura Sattelberger have been recently elected to the Young Academy of the European Mathematical Society (EMYA). Simon Telen has been an Academy member since last year and has now been appointed diversity officer. Congratulations to all of you on this great honor!

EMYA aims to promote and support the work of the young generation of mathematicians in Europe, strengthen their role within the mathematical community, and promote their career perspectives.

Irina Bobrova

Irina Bobrova is a postdoc in Anna Wienhard’s group, who has kindly invited her to apply for EMYA membership. “As a member of EMYA, I share my ideas on improving the scientific and social life of young mathematicians and participate in the organizations of related events and activities. If anyone wants to convey their struggles or wishes to the community, I would be delighted to help them with that!,” she explains.

Irina was seriously fascinated by mathematics at the Faculty of Mathematics of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, where completed her master’s and postgraduate studies. Thanks to the PAUSE program in France, she graduated from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne and obtained her second PhD in mathematics. Irina has been involved in the study of integrable systems and Painlevé equations by her scientific advisors Vladimir Poberezhnyi, Vladimir Rubtsov, and Vladimir Sokolov. Painlevé equations arise naturally from the geometry of rational surfaces and are connected with the cluster algebras, the investigation of which in a non-commutative framework is in the focus of her current research.

Visit her websites:
https://scholar.google.ru/citations?user=dLuG3Q8AAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Irina-Bobrova
www.hse.ru/en/staff/iabobrova

Anna-Laura Sattelberger

Anna-Laura has been a postdoc in the Nonlinear Algebra group of Bernd Sturmfels from 2019 to 2022. We are proud that she will return to our institute in July as a research group leader in Algebraic Analysis.

She describes her role in EMYA as follows: “To make sure that everyone can develop their talents and work under supportive circumstances, it is important to find out about challenges and problems that young researchers encounter. I am a new member of the Young Academy of the European Mathematical Society. EMYA not only offers a platform for exchange and networking, but gives early career researchers a voice and offers a platform to make an impact on developments within the academic environment throughout Europe. I am well integrated into the international mathematical community and expect that this will be helpful for the academy work, which is just about to begin for me. I am looking forward to getting started and am curious to find out about my precise role in this direct communication channel to the European Mathematical Society.” 

Anna-Laura earned her master’s degree in mathematics at the Technical University of Munich within the program TopMath, and her PhD in algebraic analysis at the University of Augsburg. Her scientific advisors were Marco Hien and Maxim Smirnov. Her first postdoc position led her to our institute, followed by a research stay in topological data analysis with Wojciech Chachólski at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, supported by the Brummer & Partners MathDataLab. Recently, Anna-Laura works as a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in the group of Kathlén Kohn, focusing on algebro-geometric foundations of the theory of machine learning.

“I very much enjoy to work interdisciplinary and in diverse teams. This symbiosis of different expertises enables one to transfer techniques and to establish new connections between different fields of research. I am excited about establishing a research group in algebraic analysis at MPI-MiS Leipzig within the ERC synergy grant UNIVERSE+. My research focusses on algebraic analysis and applied algebraic geometry, with a focus on and with inspiration from applications in the sciences, such as high energy physics: in the study of scattering processes of particles, Feynman integrals are a key player to determine the probability of specific scattering events. Algebraic geometry helps to understand how these integrals are related to each other, when the physical parameters vary. Also the differential equations that these integrals fulfil detect crucial properties of the integrals, which in turn are relevant for physical theories”, Anna-Laura describes her research.With her research group, she aims to develop algebraic tools to analyze Feynman integrals and explore new mathematical structures inspired by physical experiments. She strives for establishing a rigorous mathematical foundation of these structures using D-modules and algebraic geometry. These methods are not limited to Feynman integrals but are expected to be beneficial for further classes of special functions.

Visit her personal website: www.alsattelberger.de

Simon Telen

Simon is a research group leader in Numerical Nonlinear Algebra. His research is focused on computational algebraic geometry, with applications in theoretical physics. “I have been an EMYA member for about a year now. As diversity officer, my task is to ensure that our activities are in line with best practices for diversity and inclusion,” Simon explains.

Simon completed his master’s degree in mathematical engineering the KU Leuven. He obtained his doctorate in engineering science from the university’s Department of Computer Science under the supervision of Marc Van Barel. He then held postdoctoral research positions in applied mathematics at our institute in the groups of Bernd Sturmfels and Michael Joswig. Simon was awarded a Veni postdoctoral fellowship by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), which offered him the opportunity to implement his research project on “New frontiers in numerical nonlinear algebra” at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. Since 2023, he has been a group leader at our MPI. Simon is the scientific representative of our Max Planck Institute in the Chemistry, Physics and Technology Section of the Max Planck Society. 

His group is dedicated to developing advanced algorithms and theory to tackle the ancient problem of solving polynomial equations. In addition, he explores related problems such as polynomial optimization, variable elimination, and tensor decomposition. “Solving nonlinear equations has many applications. For example, we use our methods to decompose tensors, which are multidimensional generalizations of matrices. My group also addresses mathematical questions coming from particle physics. This includes solving scattering equations for the evaluation of scattering amplitudes and computing the singularity loci of Feynman integrals”, he explains.

Visit his personal website: https://simontelen.webnode.page/ & group page www.mis.mpg.de/numerical-nonlinear-algebra