Newsroom

Stay informed with our latest news and announcements on this page. For more in-depth content, we also encourage visitors to explore our bimonthly STRUCTURES Newsletter magazine, which features a variety of articles, interviews with members, and background information on our latest research and activities.

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Public Lecture “Mathematische Experimente” on July 02

Event Poster
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We are happy to announce the public lecture “Mathematische Experimente” by Prof. Albrecht Beutelspacher (Mathematikum Gießen), taking place on Wednesday July 2, 2025 at 5pm in the Hörsaal of the Mathematikon (INF 205), Hei­del­berg. In his talk, which will be in German, Prof. Beutelspacher will explore how simple materials can be used to create objects and experiments. The event is organized by the Re­search Station Geometry + Dynamics, with support by the STRUC­TURES Cluster of Excellence.

Abstract:
Ausgehend von der Formel des Pädagogen Pestalozzi, die das Lernen "mit Kopf, Herz und Hand" thematisiert, werden aus einfachsten Materialien Objekte und Experimente hergestellt ("Hand"). Wenn man diese Objekte sorgfältig gestaltet, treten automatisch Fragen des Zusammenpassens und der Übereinstimmung von Kanten, Flächen und Winkeln auf ("Kopf"). Und da jedes dieser Objekt ein Erfolgserlebnis verspricht, entstehen auch positive Gefühle ("Herz"). In dem Vortrag werden Experimente zu Körpern (etwa zum Tetraeder und Dodekaeder) und zu Zahlen vorgeführt und auf den mathematischen Hintergrund und das didaktische Potential eingegangen. Ein Vortrag, der für alle Altersgruppen geeignet ist und sowohl Erkenntnis als auch Unterhaltung bietet.

The talk is free of charge, a registration is not necessary.

Further information:

Schöntal Discussion Workshop 2025: Inverse Problems

Schöntal Poster
Click on the image to open the poster as PDF.

We are delighted to announce this year's iteration of the Schöntal Discussion Workshop on “Inverse Problems,” taking place from 26th to 29th of August 2025 – once again in the tranquil and idyllic location of Schöntal Abbey. The Schöntal workshop aims to bring together early-career researchers from different scientific areas of STRUC­TURES to engage in discussion over topics that go beyond the standard physics and mathematics curriculum. It especially aims at fostering vivid interdisciplinary scientific exchanges.

This year's overarching topic is “Inverse Problems,” allowing in particular interdisciplinary discussions between physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists without requiring specialized knowledge in advance. The sub-topics of the Workshop are:

  • Regularization and Stability
  • Bayesian Methods & Uncertainty Quantification
  • Sampling & Learning-Based Methods
  • Inverse Problems in Soft Matter & Liquid State Theory

The application is open until July 01, 2025. Registration is free of charge for participants from STRUCTURES. Please register via this link:
https://structures.uni-heidelberg.de/events/schoental2025/register.php

This workshop is funded by STRUCTURES' Young Researchers Convent (YRC), a subgroup of the STRUC­TURES Cluster of Excellence that brings together early-career researchers of our scientific community and supports them in realizing their own projects. Any early-career researcher who is working in a field that fits into the concept of STRUC­TURES can apply for a YRC membership. If your supervisor is a STRUC­TURES member, you are directly eligible.

Further information:

Scientific Ma­chine Learning Event “Ma­chine Learning Galore!” on July 8, 2025

Event Poster
Announcement poster (Click on the image to download the PDF)
 
Photo of the event
The Ma­chine Learning Galore! event fosters interaction and exchange between scientists working on scientific ma­chine learning.

We are delighted to announce the next event in our Ma­chine Learning Galore! series, focusing on Scientific Ma­chine Learning, which will take place on Thursday, July 08, from 4:30 to 6:00 pm at INF 205 Mathematikon (5th floor). The event features lab presentations by principal investigators, followed by brief presentations from junior scientists showcasing their latest work. Extended discussions will offer ample opportunity for in-depth exchanges.

Event Details:

  • Lab presentations: 
    • Klaus Maier-Hein
    • Florian Nieser
    • Wolfram Pernice
  • Science Talks:
    • Saikat Roy (Maier-Hein lab): Flash over Function: A cautionary tale of trend-chasing from Medical AI
    • Daniel Schiller (Nieser-Plehn-Heneka labs, STRUCTURES): Repurposing Large Language Models for Cosmology
    • Frank Brückerhoff-Plückelmann (Pernice lab): Probabilistic Photonic Computing

Registration is free but required via the ML-AI portal:
https://www.mlai.uni-heidelberg.de/en/machine-learning-talks-on-campus

About Scientific Ma­chine Learning
Scientific Ma­chine Learning is a collaborative initiative by the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) and the STRUC­TURES Cluster of Excellence. Its mission is to foster interaction and exchange within the local ma­chine learning community, and to support its development by consolidating activities and resources that might otherwise remain scattered across individual institutions or disciplines. The initiative aligns closely with the objectives of STRUC­TURES, which aims to advance fundamental research, and with IWR’s focus on applying ma­chine learning to address long-standing challenges in the natural and life sciences, engineering, and the humanities.

Further information:

From Massive Stars to Gravitational Waves: Michela Mapelli Secures ERC Advanced Grant to Decode Black Hole Origins

Photo of Michela Mapelli
Prof. Michela Mapelli
 
Logo of IMBLACK
The IMBLACK project aims to gain insights into the formation of intermediate-mass black holes. (Artistic visualization, rendered with the assistance of artificial intelligence, using GPT4o)

Michela Mapelli, STRUC­TURES Pro­fes­sor of Computational Physics, re­ceives an ERC Advanced Grant

An ERC advanced grant has been awarded to Michela Mapelli, Pro­fes­sor of Computational Physics at the Centre for Astronomy of Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty (ZAH). Her project “IMBLACK: Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in the Era of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy” aims to study the formation of intermediate-mass black holes with a mass ranging from 100 to 10'000 times the mass of our Sun.

“Black holes in this mass range are the most enigmatic.” – says Michela Mapelli – “We need them to explain the formation of supermassive black holes lying at the center of most galaxies, but their observational evidence is still scant, and their origin is puzzling. Gravitational-wave and electromagnetic measurements are starting to probe this mass regime, and the next-generation gravitational-wave detectors (Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer, and LISA) will capture their mergers across almost the entire Universe. But even if we had such data tomorrow, we would not be able to interpret them, because theo­re­ti­cal models are still too uncertain.”

To gain insight into the formation of such enigmatic objects, IMBLACK will generate an ambitious set of models of very massive star evolution, runaway stellar collisions, and hierarchical mergers of binary black holes in dense star clusters across cosmic time. The new models will be compared against the data from ground-based gravitational-wave detectors (LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA) and electromagnetic candidates, including the one recently discovered by Hei­del­berg researchers in the Galactic globular cluster Omega Centauri.

Short Bio

Michela Mapelli studied Physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Milano-Bicocca and received her PhD in Astrophysics in 2006 from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste. After two postdoctoral fellowships in Zurich and Milan, she became permanent re­search staff at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in 2011. She was then a fixed-term full professor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Innsbruck (2017-2018), and an associate professor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Padova (2018-2023). In 2023, Michela Mapelli became STRUC­TURES Pro­fes­sor of Computational Physics and joined the Institute for Theo­re­ti­cal Astrophysics (ITA) at the Center for Astronomy of Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty (ZAH) as well as the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR). She has received several recognitions for her re­search on massive stars and black holes, including the MERAC Prize for the Best Early Career Researcher in Theo­re­ti­cal Astrophysics (2015) and an ERC Consolidator grant (2017).

Further Information:

Probabilistic Photonic Computing: Wolfram Pernice Secures ERC Advanced Grant

Photo of Wolfram Pernice
Prof. Wolfram Pernice

The Eu­ro­pean Re­search Council (ERC) has granted STRUC­TURES member Wolfram Pernice an ERC Advanced Grant.

Physicist Wolfram Pernice works in the field of photonic computing on artificial neural networks, which use light instead of electrons for data processing and data communication. His current re­search aims to link these new technologies with processes of probabilistic computing. It involves ma­chine learning models which, unlike determinist approaches, work with probability statements and use noise as a resource.

The project aim is to develop hybrid integrated photonic circuits that use physical randomness for ultrafast computing. This is expected to enable optical computers performing at operation rates well beyond the limits of conventional digital computing. For his ERC project “Probabilistic Photonic Computing” (PICNIC) Prof. Pernice is to receive just under 3.5 million euros in funding. The scien­tist has been Pro­fes­sor of Experimental Physics at Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty since 2021 and heads the working group on neuromorphic quan­tum photonics at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics (KIP). For his re­search on information processing and rapid computation using light he was awarded the German Re­search Foundation’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for 2025. The Advanced Grant marks the second time he has received funding from the ERC, after having been awarded a Consolidator Grant in 2016.

Short Bio

Wolfram Pernice studied microsystems engineering at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Freiburg and computer science at Indiana Uni­ver­si­ty, Bloomington, USA. He obtained his doctorate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, UK, in 2007. A year later, he moved to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, USA, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and in 2011, he became head of an Emmy Noether junior re­search group at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In 2015, he accepted a professorship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Münster. Since 2021, Pernice has been a professor at KIP and the STRUC­TURES Cluster of Excellence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hei­del­berg. In 2013, he was elected to the Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He received an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016, and in 2019, he was a successful participant in the Volkswagen Foundation’s programme Momentum. In 2025 he received the German Re­search Foundation’s prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

Weblinks:

Mentoring and Training for Early-Career Female Scientists

Illustrative graphic showing the letters "mentoring" on a blackboard, together with the terms motivation, coaching, direction, success, training, advice.
The mentoring  programme aims to support early-career female researchers on the path to a professorship. (Image source: DOC RABE Media / Adobe Stock)

The MuT programme (Mentoring and Training) for early-career female researchers offers workshops on appointment processes, profile building, leadership, and negotiation for postdoc researchers in Baden-Württemberg. Funded by the Ministry of Science, Re­search and the Arts, the programme aims to support female academics, especially on the path to a professorship, through mentoring and training. Interested individuals can join the programme at any time and participate in workshops independently. 

The event programme and registration form can be found here: 
https://lakog-bw.de/veranstaltungen/ (in German only).

LaKoG is an association of equal opportunities officers at re­search universities, universities of education, as well as universities of art and design and universities of music and performing arts in Baden-Württemberg. Its core activities aim to encourage women to take up an academic career and to make their contributions visible, as well as supporting them by reducing structural barriers and discriminatory structures, promoting equal opportunities and enhancing the compatibility of career and family.

Further information:

Workshop: Billiards and Quantitative Symplectic Geometry

Event Poster
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We are happy to announce the workshop on Billiards and Quantitative Symplectic Geometry taking place July 14–18 at Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty, organized in collaboration with Hei­del­berg's Re­search Station Geometry + Dynamics. The workshop aims to foster the rich interplay between billiards and symplectic geometry. Billiards, with their deep connections to dynamical systems and geometry, serve as a valuable tool for studying quantitative symplectic geometry. Conversely, symplectic geometry provides the means to define new types of billiards.

Through lectures, discussions, and collaborative sessions, the event encourages the exchange of ideas, bridging these disciplines and inspiring innovative re­search directions.

When? July 14–18, 2025
Where? 5th floor conference room of the Institute of Mathematics (Mathematikon) 

Applications are open until June 15, 2025. More details and the registration form can be found at:
https://sites.google.com/view/hd-billiard-and-symplectic/

The workshop is organized by Ana Chávez Cáliz, Lina Deschamps, and Levin Maier.


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