TopMath Winter Meeting 2020

The students and doctoral candidates of the elite program TopMath work and do research in many different mathematical fields and are individually supervised in different work groups. As a result, professional and social exchange within the daily working routine is often quite limited, so TopMath offers opportunities for more interaction through a variety of formats such as the TopMath Talks, the Alumni Speakers Series and a number of other student meetings, such as the annual Winter Meeting. At the Winter Meeting, students of the different mathematical fields go on a two- to three-day retreat in order to get to know their different areas of work in a relaxed yet productive atmosphere, to exchange ideas and to intensify connections within the group.

Organization 2020: Stefan Bamberger, Fabian Roll, Luca Arcidiacono, Tobias Böhle

The Winter Meeting 2020: a student report

In this year, twelve students spent the weekend at the self-catering hut “Berghof Schönblick” near Oberstaufen in the Allgäu region. The journey from Munich takes about two hours by car.

After moving into the rooms and doing the grocery shopping, the first group activity was to cook dinner for everyone. All the necessary equipment for this was available in the hut.

After dinner we started giving short talks about our individual research field. Despite the limited time for the talks they often triggered numerous questions and discussions. The topics covered a broad variety of topics ranging from quantum computers and the mathematical theory of elections, to geometry. Thanks to technical equipment, we could also distribute the notes of these talks to all participants.

After breakfast on Saturday we went to the nearby “Alpsee-Bergwelt”. There we went on a winter hike through deep snow, reaching a mountain hut for a lunch break. Due to the lack of snow in the valley, the plan of sledding in the afternoon had to be cancelled. However, a suitable alternative was found: taking a ride on the mountain downhill-coaster which runs on rails and is operated throughout the entire year.

One part of the group spent the remaining time in the afternoon at the Oberstaufen Water Park, while the rest went back to the hut.

After making and eating pizza for dinner, we could listen to the remaining talks about research fields. The topics were again very diverse and interesting, triggered many discussions and took longer than expected. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards and board games.  The next morning we had breakfast and cleaned the hut before travelling back to Munich.

Altogether, the winter meeting certainly fulfilled its purpose of giving the TopMath students a chance to get to know each other personally, as well as to exchange subject-related ideas.

Stefan Bamberger

Presentations at the Winter Meeting 2020

Luca Arcidiacono: Geometric Desingularization of Non-Autonomous Differential Equations

Fabian Roll: Persistence Computation and Discrete Morse Theory

Matthias Caro: A Toy Model for Learning from Quantum Training Data

Stefan Bamberger: Compressed Sensing with Incoherent Bases and Local Sparsity

Maximilian Fiedler: Reconstructing Grain Scans

Jamico Schade: Polytopes of Large Lattice Width

Thiago Carvalho-Corso: Density Functional Theory and Optimal Transport

Nathanael Schilling: Geometric Approaches to Computing Coherent Sets

Marwin Forster: Functionals in Phase Transition Problems

Chris Dong: Social Choice Theory

Yifan Jia: Unitary Quantum Control

Tobias Böhle: Coupled Populations of Oscillators on the Circle