GROW@Dresden 2026 took place yesterday and today @tudresden.bsky.social and @mpi-cbg.de: This conference explores graduate programmes and research opportunities for students of underrepresented gender identities in mathematics, especially women. @haharrington.bsky.social @math-mpicbg.bsky.social
A huge and warm welcome to Daniela Egas Santander, our fourth mathematics group leader here at @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social!
Our call for ELBE Visiting Faculty at the Center for Systems Biology Dresden is live with deadline 30 November: www.csbdresden.de/join-us/as-a... Please visit us during your sabbatical!
@mpi-cbg.de @math-mpicbg.bsky.social @csbdresden.bsky.social
Lior Pachter @lpachter.bsky.social from CalTech visited us this week - a real interdisciplinarian, spanning fields from algebraic statistics & geometry to computational biology. Here he is highlighting the confounding of biological signal & technical noise in single cell genomics data. @mpi-cbg.de
New preprint: We study Lotka-Volterra ecological dynamics through computational algebraic geometry. By encoding feasibility & stability on the real Grassmannian, we prove certain ecological networks are mathematically impossible 🧮🌿 arxiv.org/abs/2509.00165
Also from
Oxford and the @haharrington.bsky.social ASB group is Rob McDonald. He models spatial data in many contexts - think tumours, Covid, and climate change. Wonderful to have you here too Rob!
The wonderful Gill Grindstaff has been with us this week from Oxford, working on a couple of phylogenetic protects with @haharrington.bsky.social and Rene Hoekzema. Welcome Gill!
New pre-print: Probabilistic algorithm for computing all local minimizers of Morse functions on a compact domain - Archive ouverte HAL
📄 Preprint: hal.science/hal-05160251v1
💻 Julia: github.com/gescholt/Glo...
#Optimization #JuliaLang #ScientificComputing #ComputerAlgebra
Silviana Amethyst from our ASB group is teaching the Computational Algebraic Geometry course at the Gene Golub #SIAM summer school in Montréal (August 4-15th: www.siam.org/programs-ini...). Topics: foundations of, software of, & advances & open problems in computational algebraic geometry 😊. Enjoy!
Novel Research in Biological Artificial Intelligence: Expressions of interest and nominations for a Max Planck Director to lead research in the field of Biological Artificial Intelligence @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social. More information: www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...
Claudia Fevola from INRIA Saclay is with us this week, visiting Türkü Özlüm Çelik - they are working on algebraic curves and the solution to the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation used in modelling the motion of water waves. Welcome Claudia!
We’re looking for a mathematical research and collaboration manager to join our new initiative of mathematics in a biology institute in Dresden, Germany! @csbdresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @math-mpicbg.bsky.social
Please share widely: careers.mpi-cbg.de/jobs/5734151...
Thanks to @aidadoesmath.bsky.social and Max Wiesmann for organising this Dresden-Leipzig meetup! And for the MTO at @mpi-cbg.de for this beautiful picture of all the attendees.
A great short chalk talk on game theory from Irem Portakal from MPI-MiS.
A couple of beautiful short talks from PhD students Elke Neuhaus from MPI-MiS on quantum chemistry, and Leon Renkin @leon-renkin.bsky.social from MPI-CBG on persistent homology in organoids.
We had a couple of short talks over lunch, including one from Niharika Chakrabarty Paul from MPI-MiS, about computing phylogenetic invariants for time-reversible models, from a paper (arxiv.org/abs/2505.20526) that started at the Women in Algebraic Statistics workshop in Oxford last year :)
Eric Pichon-Pharabod from the Numerical Algebraic Geometry group at MPI-MiS is now talking on algebraic curves.
sometimes we’re using metaphorical chalk
And now Ben Hollering - a Humboldt postdoc from TU Munich and long term guest of MPI-MiS in Leipzig - is telling us about graphical continuous Lyapunov models
Next up was Carl Modes, leader of the Network Complexity and Systems Biophysics group here at @mpi-cbg.de and @csbdresden.bsky.social, talking about the theoretical underpinnings of morphogenesis: topology and geometry meeting biology.
Awesome new paper in @nature.com from PhD student Benjamin Yang @benjaminojr.bsky.social from the Algebraic Systems Biology Group!
I posted about this paper this a while ago on another website, but figured I'd post it here now that I have a few followers. (Joint with @haharrington.bsky.social, Jacob Leygonie, @uzulim.bsky.social, and Louis Theran).
arxiv.org/abs/2411.08201
1/10
We did it! 🎉 🍾🥂
Our Excellence Cluster Physics of Life (PoL) got renewed until 2032! I am so proud of our team and all the great work we did to achieve this.
👏🥳 'Funding the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life for its next phase represents an outstanding opportunity to bring cutting-edge research at PoL to a new level. PoL will use its unique perspective to understand key features of living systems, including the emergence of function and robustness.'
And it was shown that cell localisation patterns occurring at multiple spatial scales are relevant for disease progression.
Vectorisation weightings for persistence diagrams were shown to be a computationally efficient alternative to multiparameter persistent homology. The methodology was validated on two annotated, multiplexed tissue datasets—lupus murine spleen and COVID-19-affected human lungs.
Perez et al introduce a novel visualisation method—persistence weighted death simplices (PWDS)—which maps topological features detected by persistent homology back to their locations in the original tissue data, enhancing interpretability
New paper on arXiv! 'Topology across scales on heterogeneous cell data', From Maria Torras Perez, @torrasperez.bsky.social, Heather Harrington @haharrington.bsky.social, et al: arxiv.org/abs/2505.02717
Talks, discussions, great dinners, and even some Mathletics (thanks Hannah and Tessa!). A wonderful retreat.
