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Doctorate students present their research

With­in the Top­Math Talks se­ries, stu­dents and grad­uate pro­gram mem­bers pre­sent their cur­rent re­search. They give a clear and co­herent in­sight into their math­emat­ical field and ena­ble both their col­leagues and other inter­ested per­sons to broaden their math­emat­ical knowledge.

Challenge accepted!

The for­mat of the Top­Math Talks was al­ready estab­lished and thrived on the direct inter­action in the semi­nar room. But in early 2020 a new chal­lenge arose: public events were no long­er pos­sible. Could the for­mat of the talks work as an online plat­form? One year and four talks later we can clear­ly say – yes! In fact, the flexi­bility for the lis­ten­ers, who could login from any­where, meant that we had an in­crease in those visit­ing the talks, which also bene­fitted the scien­tific ex­change. The “vir­tual coffee break” at the end of the talks could obvi­ously not ade­quate­ly re­place the live event, but none­the­less con­tributed to the up­keep of net­work­ing and ex­change be­tween the mem­bers of the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram "TopMath". In par­ticu­lar, it meant that those new to the pro­gram could still be inte­grated into the Top­Math com­muni­ty.

Our con­clu­sion is that the digi­tal talks work well on a scien­tific level and that it is worth con­sider­ing con­tinu­ing this meth­od of pre­sent­ing in the fu­ture, even when public events are again pos­sible. How­ever, pure­ly digi­tal events do re­main an emer­gency solu­tion. The in­for­mal social ex­change which takes place in com­bi­nation with scien­tific talks, con­fer­ences etc, com­ple­ments, fuels and fur­thers scien­tific ex­change, ena­bles the com­muni­ty to grow to­geth­er, moti­vates and often sparks new ideas. And that is sorely missed in the cur­rent situa­tion. So we hope to return to our lec­ture thea­tres, semi­nar rooms, fac­ulty hall­ways and offic­es soon and to be able to meet again in an in­for­mal man­ner.

 

TopMath Talks 2020: An overview

Dominik Schmid, Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie: Mixing times for the exclusion process (05.05.2020) Luca Arcidiacono, Dynamics: Geometric Desingularization of Non-Autonomous Differential Equations (26.05.2020) Claudia Stadlmayr, Algebra: Del Pezzo surfaces and rational double points (04.11.2020) Fabian Roll, Geometrie und Topologie: Persistent Homology and the Nerve Theorem (15.12.2020)

Related links:

https://www.ma.tum.de/de/studium/eliteprogramme/topmath/veranstaltungen.html
https://www.ma.tum.de/de/news-events/studium/topmath/archiv/topmath-talk-schmid.html
https://www.ma.tum.de/de/news-events/studium/topmath/archiv/topmath-talk-arcidiacono.html
https://www.ma.tum.de/de/news-events/studium/topmath/archiv/topmath-talk-mit-claudia-stadlmayr.html

Text: Katja Kröss, Elite Graduate Program "TopMath"