Each semester, the BMS designates one of the BMS Friday Colloquia as the Sonia Kovalevskaya Colloquium. This lecture, named after the pioneering Russian mathematician, features female mathematicians, both senior and junior, who are regarded as successful role models. The BMS Kovalevskaya Lunch takes place prior to the main lecture and is an event held exclusively for women at the BMS.

On 2 June 2017, the 20th BMS Kovalevskaya Lunch took place with Prof. Sujatha Ramdorai as the twentieth special guest invited to share her experience as a woman mathematician with twenty participants from the BMS. In celebration of this milestone, everyone in attendance was given a small gift from the BMS in the form of a USB stick. 

Sujatha Ramdorai is an algebraic number theorist and, over lunch at the Urania Berlin, she shared the story of her desire to study mathematics and outlined her career success to date, which includes being a member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India for a period of five years. Sujatha is currently a professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia in Canada. 

The BMS Kovalevskaya Lunch, held once a semester since 2007, aims to give female students the opportunity to talk to an outstanding female mathematician and to exchange experiences as women in the field of mathematics. At this informal event, students have the chance to discuss the issues that directly impact female mathematicians and their careers, such as job opportunities, parenthood and work-life balance. Phase I student Yingying, who took part in the Kovalevskaya Lunch for the first time, said that the meeting with Sujatha gave her more motivation to continue doing mathematics and to contribute to the support of women in this field. She added that she was grateful to have been given the chance to meet Sujatha in person. 

Previous Sonia Kovalevskaya Colloquium guest speakers can be found on this page of our website.

The BMS is committed to providing an outstanding environment where women are able to thrive in mathematics. In 2016, the BMS student body was over 30% female, but the goal of the BMS is to achieve a 50% representation of women among its students. As well as the Kovalevskaya Lunch event, the BMS strives to provide positive role models for women via the BMS faculty and postdoc faculty members, BMS mentors, board members, guest speakers and visitors too. In addition, the BMS awards the Hilda Geiringer Scholarship to outstanding female PhD students in recognition of their achievements to date and to support their future mathematical research endeavours. Hilda Geiringer’s daughter, Magda Tisza, validated the efforts of the BMS in fostering women mathematicians with her comment: "The stellar record of some of your scholarship selections is impressive."


Written by S. E. Sutherland-Figini

On Tuesday 23 May 2017, the BMS welcomed a delegation of 20 undergraduate students and three faculty members from Morehouse College and Spelman College, two American universities situated in Atlanta, Georgia. This event aimed to give the visiting students and faculty a chance to connect with their counterparts in Germany, and gain first-hand exposure to prospective careers and research opportunities in the field of mathematics.

BMS Deputy Chair, Prof. Dr. John Sullivan, began by giving a presentation about the BMS, its PhD Program, and about the mathematics landscape in Berlin in general. This was followed by talks from three BMS Phase II students, who each presented their own research projects. Patrick Gelß, based at the FU, gave a talk on “The tensor-train format and its applications - Modeling and analysis of chemical reaction networks, catalytic processes, fluid flows, and Brownian dynamics”. Ana Djurdjevac, also based at the FU, presented her research on “Random PDEs on evolving hypersurfaces”. Finally, using material from his PhD project, Carlos Echeverría Serur, based at the TU, gave a talk entitled “On the solution of linear systems arising from Shishkin mesh discretizations”. Carlos said he hopes that all the talks will encourage some of the American students to come to Berlin for their graduate studies.

Following the BMS presentations, the delegation then visited the TU Berlin's 3D LAB. Afterwards, the American students and faculty were given the chance to interact informally with BMS students, faculty and staff over lunch in the BMS Lounge.

This event was part of the STEM LAUNCH Study Tour of Germany organized by Cultural Vistas, a non-profit organization that facilitates connections between American and international students, academics and professionals. Through a two-week professional and cultural tour of Berlin and Munich, this study tour aims to encourage students from Georgia-based historically black colleges & universities to consider adding an international context to their educational and career paths.

 

Written by S. E. Sutherland-Figini

The BMS would like to congratulate Jürg Kramer on his appointment as the European Mathematical Society's Committee Chair of Education. Kramer, who is the vice chair of the BMS and professor for mathematics at the HU Berlin, took over as chair from Günter Törner (U Duisburg-Essen) whose term of office ran from 2010 to 2016.

The European Mathematical Society (EMS) was founded in 1990 in Madralin, Poland. Its purpose is to further the development of all aspects of mathematics in Europe, in particular to promote research in mathematics and its applications. The goal of the EMS Committee for Education is to report and act on educational issues that are of concern to EMS members without infringing on the responsibilities of the national mathematics societies.

Jürg Kramer completed his PhD in Basel and habilitation at the ETH Zürich. He has held a professorship of mathematics at the HU Berlin since 1994, and has been a member of the BMS Board since 2006, acting twice as the BMS chair. His research interests lie in arithmetic geometry and the theory of automorphic forms, and he is particularly active in the professional education and training of mathematics teachers. His tenure as EMS Committee Chair of Education runs for four years from 01.01.2017 to 31.12.2020.

Congratulations Jürg on your new appointment!

BMS Phase II students Martin Genzel and Benjamin Unger were appointed GAMM Juniors by the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics) in December 2016.

GAMM was founded in 1922 by Ludwig Prandtl and Richard von Mises to promote scientific development in all areas of applied mathematics and mechanics. The association fosters international cooperation and currently comprises over 2000 members.

Each year, ten new GAMM Juniors are selected in recognition of their outstanding achievements in their graduate and/or doctoral theses in the field of applied mathematics or mechanics. To be eligible, these young scientists must be under the age of 32 at the time of application and have a final thesis not older than two years. The successful candidates are invited to become active in GAMM for three years as ambassadors of young scientists in the fields of applied mathematics and mechanics, representing these disciplines within the scientific community and society. During this time, they are exempt from GAMM membership fees and are offered additional financial and moral support in their scientific endeavors. With an overlap in the term of office of the thirty members, their technical and organizational knowledge can be passed on to succeeding generations of GAMM Juniors. 

Current GAMM Juniors include BMS Phase II students Sandra Keiper and Philipp Petersen. BMS alumni Agnieszka Miedlar and Robert Altmann were GAMM Juniors until 2014 and 2016, respectively.

Martin Genzel was selected in recognition of his master's thesis entitled "Sparse Proteomics Analysis" and will be active as a GAMM Junior for three years from 2017 until the end of 2019. He is a member of the Applied Functional Analysis research group at the TU Berlin and is currently working on the project “Sparse Compressed Sensing based Classifiers for -omics mass-data” under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gitta Kutyniok. In his research, Martin particularly focuses on high-dimensional data analysis and compressed sensing, as well as several topics from machine learning.

Benjamin Unger was selected in recognition of his master's thesis entitled "Impact of Discretization Techniques on Nonlinear Model Reduction and Analysis of the Structure of the POD Basis" and will also be a GAMM Junior for three years until the end of 2019. He is a member of the Numerical Mathematics research group at the TU Berlin and is working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Volker Mehrmann. The research project that Benjamin is involved in is "SFB 910, Control of self-organizing nonlinear systems: Theoretical methods and concepts of application". Within this project, he is working on the stability of delay differential-algebraic equations. Closely connected is model order reduction of transport-dominated phenomena.

Congratulations to both Martin und Benjamin!


Written by S. E. Sutherland-Figini

Source: GAMM

Henry Cohn reports about the spectacular work of the BMS Dirichlet Postdoc Maryna Viazovska in Notices of the AMS: 
http://www.ams.org/publications/journals/notices/201702/rnoti-p102.pdf

 

Click here to read our full article: BMS Dirichlet Postdoc solves sphere packing in higher dimensions

BMS alumni Robert Altmann and Atul Shekhar were recognized for their scientific achievements at the 2016 State Conference of Rectors and Presidents of Berlin Universities (Landeskonferenz der Rektoren und Präsidenten der Berliner Hochschulen).

Robert was awarded the second Tiburtius Prize in the dissertation category for his outstanding PhD thesis entitled “Regularization and Simulation of Constrained Partial Differential Equations”. His thesis deals with the regularization of differential-algebraic equations and the resulting positive impact on the corresponding semi-discrete systems. Robert did his PhD at the TU Berlin under the supervision of BMS faculty member Prof. Dr. Volker Mehrmann and graduated with summa cum laude in 2015. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in the Numerical Mathematics research group at the TU Berlin. His award came with prize money in the sum of 2500 euros.

Atul was honoured with a Tiburtius recognition award for his doctoral dissertation entitled "Rough paths, probability and related topics". The theory of rough paths emerges from numerical methods for differential equations and builds a bridge between analysis and stochastics. Atul completed his PhD under the supervision of BMS faculty member Prof. Dr. Peter K. Friz and graduated from the TU Berlin in 2015 with summa cum laude. Atul is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore. His award came with prize money in the sum of 500 euros.

The State Conference of Rectors and Presidents of Berlin Universities (LKRP) annually awards three Tiburtius Prizes and three awards of recognition to recent PhD graduates from Berlin's universities for their outstanding doctoral theses. The prize-giving ceremony was held at the FU Berlin on 22 November 2016.

Many congratulations to Robert and Atul!

German-language source:
http://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/zielgruppen/presse/medieninformationen/2016/november/medieninformation_nr_1902016/