Anna von Pippich,
BMS Phase II student,
Diplom Humboldt-Universität

For two years now, I have been a Ph.D. student at the BMS working on a dissertation in the theory of automorphic forms. Financially, I am supported by a scholarship from the International DFG Research Training Group “Arithmetic and Geometry”, a joint project of HU Berlin and ETH/University Zurich. In our weekly “graduate seminar” we meet to either study a specific topic chosen by the graduate students or to report on the progress of our individual work. I benefit a lot from the interesting and fruitful scientific discussions in this seminar. A highlight not only from the scientific point of view is the annual summer school, bringing together doctoral students and faculty members of HU Berlin and ETH/University Zurich. A valuable experience within the joint graduate program were the six months I spent at ETH Zurich.

What I like particularly about the BMS are the BMS Fridays: the lectures give insights into various topics of mathematics and are all very enlightening and motivating for my view towards mathematics. In addition, it is a wonderful opportunity to meet Ph.D. students working in other areas of mathematics before the BMS Fridays lectures. Worth mentioning is also the Kovalevskaya lunch where the female students have the possibility to talk in a relaxed atmosphere to women mathematicians who have been highly successful in their career. All in all, the BMS provides a great and very supportive platform for my Ph.D. project and I am very happy to be part of this dynamic and inspiring mathematical community.

published in April 2008

Update 2018: Anna has been an assistant professor ("Junior-Professorin") for algebra and number theory at TU Darmstadt since 2013.