Math for Science at MPI-CBG
Mathematicians developing mathematics and methods to look at living systems differently.
Colocated at @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social in Dresden, Germany.
- A huge and warm welcome to Daniela Egas Santander, our fourth mathematics group leader here at @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social!
- With her research group, “Algebraic Topology and Networks in Biology,” Daniela Egas Santander joins @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social. Welcome, Daniela! 🎉 @math-mpicbg.bsky.social www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...
- Reposted by Math for Science at MPI-CBGOur call for ELBE Visiting Faculty at the Center for Systems Biology Dresden is live with deadline 30 November: www.csbdresden.de/join-us/as-a... Please visit us during your sabbatical! @mpi-cbg.de @math-mpicbg.bsky.social @csbdresden.bsky.social
- Lior Pachter @lpachter.bsky.social from CalTech visited us this week - a real interdisciplinarian, spanning fields from algebraic statistics & geometry to computational biology. Here he is highlighting the confounding of biological signal & technical noise in single cell genomics data. @mpi-cbg.de
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- Also from Oxford and the @haharrington.bsky.social ASB group is Rob McDonald. He models spatial data in many contexts - think tumours, Covid, and climate change. Wonderful to have you here too Rob!
- The wonderful Gill Grindstaff has been with us this week from Oxford, working on a couple of phylogenetic protects with @haharrington.bsky.social and Rene Hoekzema. Welcome Gill!
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- Silviana Amethyst from our ASB group is teaching the Computational Algebraic Geometry course at the Gene Golub #SIAM summer school in Montréal (August 4-15th: www.siam.org/programs-ini...). Topics: foundations of, software of, & advances & open problems in computational algebraic geometry 😊. Enjoy!
- Reposted by Math for Science at MPI-CBGNovel Research in Biological Artificial Intelligence: Expressions of interest and nominations for a Max Planck Director to lead research in the field of Biological Artificial Intelligence @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social. More information: www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...
- Claudia Fevola from INRIA Saclay is with us this week, visiting Türkü Özlüm Çelik - they are working on algebraic curves and the solution to the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation used in modelling the motion of water waves. Welcome Claudia!
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- Thanks to @aidadoesmath.bsky.social and Max Wiesmann for organising this Dresden-Leipzig meetup! And for the MTO at @mpi-cbg.de for this beautiful picture of all the attendees.
- A great short chalk talk on game theory from Irem Portakal from MPI-MiS.
- A couple of beautiful short talks from PhD students Elke Neuhaus from MPI-MiS on quantum chemistry, and Leon Renkin @leon-renkin.bsky.social from MPI-CBG on persistent homology in organoids.
- We had a couple of short talks over lunch, including one from Niharika Chakrabarty Paul from MPI-MiS, about computing phylogenetic invariants for time-reversible models, from a paper (arxiv.org/abs/2505.20526) that started at the Women in Algebraic Statistics workshop in Oxford last year :)
- Eric Pichon-Pharabod from the Numerical Algebraic Geometry group at MPI-MiS is now talking on algebraic curves.
- And now Ben Hollering - a Humboldt postdoc from TU Munich and long term guest of MPI-MiS in Leipzig - is telling us about graphical continuous Lyapunov models
- Next up was Carl Modes, leader of the Network Complexity and Systems Biophysics group here at @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social, talking about the theoretical underpinnings of morphogenesis: topology and geometry meeting biology.
- Awesome new paper in @nature.com from PhD student Benjamin Yang @benjaminojr.bsky.social from the Algebraic Systems Biology Group!
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- 👏🥳 'Funding the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life for its next phase represents an outstanding opportunity to bring cutting-edge research at PoL to a new level. PoL will use its unique perspective to understand key features of living systems, including the emergence of function and robustness.'
- Outstanding success: 🎉 #TUDresden shines with 5 Clusters of Excellence. @dfg.de & @wissenschaftsrat.de announced that decision today. TUD has impressively proven its claim to be a top university for the 21st century. ℹ️ tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/n...
- New paper on arXiv! 'Topology across scales on heterogeneous cell data', From Maria Torras Perez, @torrasperez.bsky.social, Heather Harrington @haharrington.bsky.social, et al: arxiv.org/abs/2505.02717
- Talks, discussions, great dinners, and even some Mathletics (thanks Hannah and Tessa!). A wonderful retreat.
- We had many others too, but here’s us celebrating Maria Torras Pérez’s @torrasperez.bsky.social new paper going up on arXiv about a new visualisation method to study spatial patterns in cell distribution data. More to come on this!
- Sergio Serrano de Haro Iváñez @sergiosdhi.bsky.social from the Algebraic Systems Biology group explaining how topological data analysis can be applied to colorectal cancer.
- Joining us at the retreat, and soon also as a postdoc in @aidadoesmath.bsky.social’s group is Carlotta Langer talking about information-theoretic complexity measures in the context of integrated information theory. Madly interesting stuff.
- Karel Devriendt, a postdoc with @turkuozlumcelik.bsky.social in the Mathematical Structures and Applications group, talking about his work on discretising curvature in graphs.
- Silviana Amethyst, a Research Engineer also in the Algebraic Systems Biology group, showcasing Bertini2, a program for solving polynomial systems: silviana.org/computer_pro...
- Kelly Maggs @k311ym4gg5.bsky.social, a postdoc in the Algebraic Systems Biology group, thinking about ways of coming from mathematics and approaching interdisciplinary work with biologists
- A few snippets from our retreat. First up, Türkü Özlüm Çelik @turkuozlumcelik.bsky.social, one of our math group leaders, giving a window into her ideas about computational algebraic geometry. ‘This showcases how fruitful and delicate a mathematical structure of some natural phenomenon can be’.
- Highlights to come from Brunów, Poland, but here we all are! All current and upcoming members. A wonderful couple of days getting to know more about each others’ work. All three groups together: @haharrington.bsky.social, Türkü Özlüm Çelik, and @aidadoesmath.bsky.social 🩵🩵🩵
- Our mathematicians are on retreat in Poland! Coming together for lots of short talks and many side discussions. @jiayi-li.bsky.social is currently talking machine learning
- And here’s Vukašin Stojisavlević himself! Great to have you with us :)
- Recently Türkü Özlüm Çelik was visited by Claudia Fevola (INRIA Saclay), Yelena Mandelshtam (Institute for Advanced Study), and Simonetta Abenda (University of Bologna) to work on algebraic curves. Here they are at dinner after lots of mathematics!
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- Vukašin Stojisavljević - a postdoc at the Université de Montréal who will soon be joining us as a postdoc - is visiting us this week! He'll be giving a talk tomorrow at TUDresden @tudresden.bsky.social on nodal topology and TDA (2.30pm, room WIL C/104). Please do join! Welcome Vukašin :)
- A lil end of the week dinner with lots of drink symmetry with @annamfra.bsky.social @vincgalg.bsky.social @aidadoesmath.bsky.social @fulges.bsky.social and Shelby Cox. Summer is coming!
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- Fulvio Gesmundo @fulges.bsky.social from the Université de Toulouse visited Vincenzo @vincgalg.bsky.social this week to work on tensor geometry. Fulvio works on tensor decomposition, ie rewriting tensors to make them usable for computations. Happy to have you with us Fulvio!
- @hadrienoliveri.bsky.social, the first postdoc to get a group leader position from the Algebraic Systems biology group last summer, came to visit us from the MPI of Plant Breeding Research in Köln (Cologne). So lovely to have you back with us Hadrien!
- Faculty hire alert! We are so excited to announce the wonderful Jane Coons - a postdoc in the Algebraic Systems Biology group - will be an Assistant Professor in the Mathematical Sciences dept at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts in the US, starting August. Huge congrats Jane! 🩵😎
- Sometimes we go on bike rides by the beautiful Elbe! 🚴♀️🚴
- Danai Deligeorgaki was here this week visiting @aidadoesmath.bsky.social to discuss the combinatorics of statistical models. Wonderful to have you here Danai!
- We missed Jiayi these last few weeks - after Algebraic Statistics, she stayed in Munich to work with Jose Rodriguez from April 5 to 9, then headed to the SLMath workshop for Al in Mathematics in Berkeley. She also got to see her much loved cat. So happy to have you back Jiayi!
- Team training in Barcelona - a really productive time. Systems, comms, planning, and much more. Here they are in front of Gaudi’s La Pedrera/Casa Milà 🏛️
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- A reminder of the newly launched Max Planck postdoc program - applications open for another couple of weeks, see here for details:
- Simonetta Abenda from the University of Bologna recently visited Türkü Özlüm Çelik here at CSBD to discuss integrable systems and the Kadomtstev-Petviashvilli hierarchy
- School holidays here in Deutschland and a bunch of us are flying off to visit family and friends. Enjoy your trips, all! 🩵
- After Munich, longstanding collaborator Elizabeth Gross visited us from the University of Hawaii. She gave a wonderful talk about dynamic Markov bases, and had some great conversations with Jiayi, Jane, @georgysch.bsky.social, Türkü, and many others. Here she is with @haharrington.bsky.social
- Welcoming @aidadoesmath.bsky.social’s guest Skye Rothstein from MPI for Mathematics in the Sciences last night with some beautiful Turkish food. Yesterday he gave a wonderful talk on the topology of polyminoids in CSBD
- Massive congrats to PhD student @benjaminojr.bsky.social who had his first paper accepted last night! Awesome news 🙌🏼
- Last few pics from the Algebraic Statistics conference in Munich! Jane Coons, Oskar Henriksson, Elizabeth Gross, Max Weismann, and Karel Devriendt all gave talks 👌🏼
- A wonderful talk from Jose Rodriguez (sites.google.com/wisc.edu/jos...) on the expressiveness of polynomial neural networks and applications of nonlinear algebra to study Convolutional Neural Networks. A source of inspiration for @georgysch.bsky.social who is this week’s speaker in our ML seminar
