D-MATH News

On 17 October, Johanna Ziegel gave her inaugural lecture entitled: "How good is their best guess? Constructing and evaluating predictions". She has been a full professor of statistics in the Department since 1 January 2024.

On 25 September, Svitlana Mayboroda gave her inaugural lecture entitled: "The hidden structure of the disorder: seeing complex geometry through the goggles of waves and minimizers". She has been a full professor in the Department since 1 August 2023.

The mathematical concepts that Svitlana Mayboroda develops can be used for all kinds of different applications – from studying the formation of stars to creating new semiconductors that save energy. For Mayboroda herself, however, the focus is on proving mathematical theorems with the aim of expanding our knowledge.

Yuansi Chen joined the Department of Mathematics as an associate professor of statistics at the beginning of this year. His research interests are centred around problems in Bayesian statistics and machine learning, but cross disciplinary boundaries – a theme that is also reflected in his teaching.

Philippe von Wurstemberger successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Overcoming the curse of dimensionality for PDEs: from conventional numerics and nonlinear Monte Carlo to deep learning". Congratulations!

We are delighted to announce that Professor Svitlana Mayboroda has been elected as a fellow of the Mathematics Division of the European Academy of Sciences.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Habib Ammari was appointed Senior Fellow at the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study.

We are delighted to announce that Alessio Figalli and Mikaela Iacobelli have been selected as members of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) for the academic year 2024-25.

Congratulations to our professor Peter Hintz. He is one of the four candidates from ETH Zurich who has received a Consolidators Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Across Switzerland, the SNSF awarded 19 SNSF Consolidator Grants to researchers from nine institutions.

We are very pleased to announce that Senior Scientest Dr Meike Akveld was appointed Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the meeting of the ETH Board on 10/11 July 2024. The promotion is effective from 1 August 2024.

We are delighted to announce that Sobhan Seyfaddini, former Director of Research at the CNRS and at Université d’Orsay was appointed Full Professor of Mathematics at the meeting of the ETH Board on 22/23 May 2024. He took up his position on 1 August 2024.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Peter Hintz has been honoured with the 2024 Early Career Award by the International Association of Mathematical Physics (IAMP).

We are delighted to announce that Professor Peter Bühlmann received the 2024 Wald Memorial Award and Lecture and will deliver the Wald Lecture at the World Congress in Probability and Statistics in Bochum.

Jakob Heiss successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Inductive bias of neural networks and selected applications". Congratulations!

Konstantinos Alexopoulos successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Mathematical analysis of dispersive and damped materials and applications". Congratulations!

We are very pleased to announce that Hermann-Weyl-Instructor Dr Hyunju Kwon was appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the meeting of the ETH Board on 23 May 2024. She took up her new position on 1 July 2024.

We are very sad to announce that Professor Rolf Jeltsch passed away on 28 June 2024 at the age of 79.

Raphael Appenzeller successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Semialgebraic groups and generalized affine buildings". Congratulations!

Syang Zhou successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Real-time processing of information by signature inspired machine learning". Congratulations!

Johanna Ziegel has been a full professor of statistics since 1 January 2024. Her research at the intersection of statistics, risk management, financial mathematics, and interdisciplinary data sciences revolves around forecasting in a broad variety of contexts – and provides mathematical tools to tell when a prediction is "good".

Felix Kuchelmeister successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Classification with small noise". Congratulations!

We are very pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Joaquim Serra was appointed Associate Professor of Mathematics at the meeting of the ETH Board on 23 May 2024. The promotion is effective from 1 June 2024.

Last week, students of the Master's degree programmes in Mathematics, Statistics as well as Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) celebrated their successful graduation. Congratulations and all the best for the future!

Harald Besdziek successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Convergence rates of estimators based on the maximum likelihood estimator in the presence of mixing". Congratulations!

Federico Franceschini successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Higher regularity of singular free boundaries". Congratulations!  

The top-scoring 100 girls in the Kangaroo mathematics competition were invited to spend a day exploring ETH Zurich, experimenting in labs and meeting like-minded people.

Lauro Silini successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "A geometric approach to isoperimetric problems and the semigeostrophic system". Congratulations!  

Christoph Schultheiss successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "On possibilities and impossibilities for causal inference with observational data". Congratulations!

We are delighted to announce that Habib Ammari delivers ten lectures on the topic "Mathematical methods for novel metamaterials" in the framework of the 2024 NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conferences in the Mathematical Sciences at Auburn University.

Four teaching projects were presented by department members at the 2024 Innovation in Learning and Teaching Fair. One of the projects was among the three finalists for the KITE Award.

Sara van de Geer was invited by the Abel Prize Committee to give an Abel Prize lecture in honour of the 2024 Abel Prize winner Michel Talagrand.

On 13 May, Professor Mikaela Iacobelli gave her inaugural lecture entitled: "Challenges and Breakthroughs in the Mathematics of Plasmas". She has been an associate professor at the Department since April 2023.

Pedro Abdalla Teixeira successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Non-convex optimization in networks and high-dimensional covariance estimation". Congratulations!

Valentin Bosshard successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Lagrangian cobordisms in Liouville manifolds". Congratulations!

On 8 May, PD Dr Menny Akka gave his introductory lecture entitled: "Homogeneous spaces: a playground for arithmetic, dynamics, groups and geometry".

Cynthia Bortolotto successfully passed her oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Distribution problems in analysis and number theory". Congratulations!

Jinghao Cao successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Mathematical foundation for symmetry breaking in subwavelength physics". Congratulations!

Tim De Ryck successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Mathematical guarantees for physics-informed machine learning". Congratulations!

David Munha Canas Correia successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Hamiltonicity and other topics in combinatorics". Congratulations!

Alessio Cela successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Fixed-curve counts in algebraic varieties". Congratulations!

We are delighted to announce that Professor Siddhartha Mishra has been elected  member of the mathematics division of the European Academy of Sciences.

At the "Meet the Talent" event, donors of the "Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Programme" (ESOP) met scholarship recipients for a personal exchange. The Department of Mathematics was well represented with four students.

Stefan Kurz has been appointed the first Professor of Practice in the Department. He is VP Senior Chief Expert for Hybrid Modelling at the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence and also Docent for Electromagnetism and Mathematical Modelling at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. In this interview, he talks about his role as a bridge-builder between academia and industry.

Cole Jeznach successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Quantitative rectifiability and harmonic measure for sets of high co-dimension". Congratulations!  

John Ery successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Actuarial data science: lnsights from pricing, capital modeling and CAT bonds". Congratulations!  

On 5 March, Alison Etheridge held the 2024 Alice Roth lecture "Some mathematical models of evolution". She is Professor of Probability at the University of Oxford.

Piyush Panchal successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Electrostatic and magnetostatic force computation with shape calculus and BEM". Congratulations!  

Lisa Ricci successfully passed her oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "The symplectic Hitchin component for triangle groups: dimension formula and parameters for ∆ (3; 4; 4)". Congratulations!

After 28 years in the department, Professor Giovanni Felder gave his farewell lecture on 28 February. In this interview, he speaks about his early years switching between disciplines, and his time as the founding director of the ETH  Institute for Theoretical Studies and as co-director of NCCR SwissMAP.

On 21 February, Professor Sarah Zerbes gave her inaugural lecture entitled: "Elliptic curves and Fermat’s last theorem". She has been a professor at the Department since 1 January 2022.

As part of the STEM week at MNG Rämibühl, a group of students visited the Department. After a brief introduction to the study programme, the students had the opportunity to test their problem-solving skills to unravel the secrets of mathematical card tricks.

We would like to welcome our new faculty member, Professor Yuansi Chen. He was appointed by the ETH Board in July 2023.

Ignacio Labarca successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Coupled boundary-volume integral equations for wave propagation". Congratulations!  

Tandri Gauksson successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Adversarial perturbations: from classification to inverse problems". Congratulations!

Andreas Schiller successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Transient and frequency-domain simulation of mixed electronic-ionic charge transport in thin-film devices". Congratulations!

Tommaso Botta successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Stable envelopes of Nakajima and bow varieties: Geometry, combinatorics, and 3d mirror symmetry". Congratulations!

We would like to welcome our new faculty member, Professor Johanna Ziegel. She was appointed by the ETH Board in May 2023 and took up her position on 1 January 2024.

We are very pleased to announce that Rico Zenklusen was appointed Full Professor of Mathematics at the meeting of the ETH Board in December 2023. The promotion is effective from 1 January 2024.

We deeply regret to inform that our dear colleague and friend Hjalti Isleifsson passed away on Friday, 15 December, 2023, at the age of 27.

Twenty years ago, the Master of Science UZH ETH in Quantitative Finance was launched. This international degree programme combines economic theory and finance with mathematical methods such as probability theory, statistics and econometrics as well as numerical analysis for finance and insurance.

The Association of Mathematics, Physics and CSE Students (VMP) has honoured ten student assistants from the Departments of Mathematics and Physics with the VMP Assistant Award for the Autumn Semester 2023.

Although the level of mathematics education at Swiss secondary schools is very high, it offers top students too few opportunities to deepen their interest in this subject. The ETH Math Youth Academy meets this need with its flexible and multi-level system. In the following interview, Dr Kaloyan Slavov, Director of the Academy, explains how he teaches students mathematical thinking and introduces them step by step to complex mathematical topics.

David Martins successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Aspects of quadratic utility: mean-variance hedging in rough volatility models, and CAPM-type equilibria". Congratulations!

Tommaso Goldhirsch successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Higher rank hyperbolicity and currents in metric spaces". Congratulations!

Paul Embrechts and his co-authors were awarded the Best Paper Award on Financial Engineering in the journal Operations Research.

Roberto Molinaro successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Applications of deep learning to scientific computing". Congratulations!

On 30 October, Professor Jonas Peters gave his inaugural lecture entitled: "What happens if? Can we learn from data how ecosystems react to changes?" He has been a professor at the Department since 1 April 2023.

We are delighted to announce that the VSETH and VMP student associations have honoured Professor Vincent Tassion with the 2023 Golden Owl. In this interview, he talks about what the award means to him and the principles he follows when teaching maths.

The inaugural 2024 Elias M. Stein Prize for New Perspectives in Analysis is awarded jointly to Marcel Filoche and Svitlana Mayboroda for their original, powerful, elegant and impactful theory of the "localization landscape."

On 14 November, the 2023 Heinz Hopf Prize was awarded to Lai-Sang Young, a leading dynamicist since the 1980s whose contributions range from chaotic systems to computational neuroscience.  

Xenia Flamm successfully passed her oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "On the real spectrum compactification of Hitchin components". Congratulations!

Francesco Fournier successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Utrametic problems in rigidity theory ". Congratulations!

We are delighted to announce that Professor Benny Sudakov will be one of the plenary speakers at the 2024 European Congress of Mathematics in Sevilla.

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Svitlana Mayboroda has been awarded the 2023 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Yesterday, a new generation of Bachelor's and Master's students in mathematics, statistics and computational science and engineering started their studies at the Department of Mathematics.

At this year's Scientifica, the Department of Mathematics invited visitors to experiment with soap bubbles and learn more about the topic of minimal surfaces. At the exhibition stand, they could play around with a giant soap skin and experiment with wire models of common geometic forms.

Konstantin Rusch successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Physics-inspired machine learning". Congratulations!

Lorenzo Giacomel successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Electron cloud buildup simulations in 3D RF structures". Congratulations!

Ivan Sergeev successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Constant-​competitive online selection algorithms with almost no prior information". Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce that Professor Josef Teichmann was elected Head of Department. As of 1 August 2023, he has taken over from his predecessor Professor Robert Weismantel.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Rahul Pandharipande has been awarded the Humboldt Research Award.

We warmly welcome our new faculty member, Professor Svitlana Mayboroda. She was appointed by the ETH Board in March 2022 and took up her position on 1 August 2023.

The Swiss team won four medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) that took place from 2 to 13 July 2023 in Japan. Three of the winners attended the ETH Math Youth Academy.

Georg Anegg successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Techniques for designing approximation algorithms for fair clustering problems". Congratulations!

Marco Petrella successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Multi-scale computations of compressible two-phase flow problems". Congratulations!

Siddhartha Mishra has been awarded this year's Rössler Prize for his research on solutions for highly complex flow and wave phenomena. He is being recognised for his contributions to faster and more accurate predictions of weather, climate and tsunamis, and for the computer simulations that enable them.

Hanna Wutte successfully passed her oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "A Take on deep learning in finance: Uncertainty quantification and dynamic decision making". Congratulations!  

Jonas Peters started his position as a full professor of statistics on 1 April 2023. His work at the intersection of statistics, data science and machine learning brings fresh impetus to the research, teaching and outreach at the Department.

Alessandro Lägeler successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Cycle integrals of Maass cusp forms arid of holomorphic functions with rational periods". Congratulations!

We are delighted to announce that Professor Sara van de Geer was elected member of the European Academy of Sciences.

Luca De Rosa successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Currents in Teichmueller Theory and their dual spaces". Congratulations!

ETH invited the 100 best female 7th graders from the Kangaroo mathematics competition to the Hönggerberg campus, providing them with a unique opportunity to meet ETH researchers such as Maybritt Schillinger.

On 31 May, Professor Sara van de Geer gave her farewell lecture entitled: "Data dust". She has been a professor at the Seminar for Statistics since 2005.

Last week, the students of the Master's programmes in Mathematics, Statistics as well as Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) celebrated their graduation. Congratulations to all on the successful completion of their studies!

Laurin Köhler-Schindler successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Positive association in critical percolation". Congratulations!

We are delighted to announce that Tim De Ryck has been honoured with the 2023 PhD Award from the Analytics Club at ETH.

Paula Truöl successfully passed her oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "On notions of braid positivity and knot concordance". Congratulations!  

The Association of Mathematics, Physics and CSE Students (VMP) has honoured ten student assistants from the Departments of Mathematics and Physics with the VMP Assistant Award for the Spring Semester 2023.  

Nemanja Draganic successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "Embedding problems in graphs and digraphs". Congratulations!

Miguel Moreira successfully passed his oral doctoral thesis examination entitled: "The Virasoro constraints in moduli spaces of sheaves". Congratulations!