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.

STRUCTURES member Friedrich Röpke, head of the Physics of Stellar Objects group at Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), has received an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant of €2.5 million for his project ExCEED (“Explaining Common-Envelope Evolution and Dynamics in binary stellar systems“), which explores the enigmatic common-envelope phase in binary stellar evolution.
Moreover, STRUCTURES member Nicolò Defenu, currently member of the mathematical physics group at the Institute for Theoretical Studies, ETH Zurich, has received an European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant of €1.5 million for his project QLR-Net (“Quantum long-range networks”), which explores the prismatic physics of long-range interacting quantum systems in the many-body regime.
We congratulate the two to these highly prestigious awards!

On Girls' Day, April 27, 2023, the Department of Physics and Astronomy is offering 16 exciting hands-on workshops. You will get to know the faculty and our participating institutes on a tour, you can look over the shoulders of our physicists at work, ask all your burning questions, learn a lot about physics and have a lot of fun.
More details on this year's workshop offerings can be found at:
https://www.physik.uni-heidelberg.de/girlsday/programm.
Source: Department of Physics and Astronomy
We are happy to announce the weekly seminar Topological Data Analysis (TDA) organized by the STRUCTURES Exploratory Project (EP) Mathematics and Data. The goal of the seminar is to bring together people from various backgrounds who are interested in TDA. The prospective topics will, amongst others, include synergies with Machine Learning (ML). Scientists with a background in computer science or ML are particularly encouraged to participate.
Time & Place: Thursdays 11.15 am to 12.45 am at room 0.200, Mathematikon. The first meeting of the semester will take place on April 27th, exceptionally in the SR Statistik 02.104 of the Mathematikon.
The EP Mathematics and Data provides a platform across the fields of the natural sciences and mathematics to discuss applications and foundations of the topological analysis of data (TDA) and beyond. TDA provides versatile tools to uncover potentially hidden topological structures in data. Researches who use TDA in statistical contexts are regularly surprised by its vast sensitivity to non-local correlations.
Please find the Seminar Announcement here.
We are happy to present the eleventh volume of the STRUCTURES Newsletter with the following topics:
- New STRUCTURES Members: Caroline Heneka and Jakob Zech
- Akademische Mittagspause 2023: „Strukturen in der Welt“
- From EP 3.4: What can observations of galaxies tell us about their history?
- We Are STRUCTURES
- STRUCTURES Asks: Georgia Koppe
The STRUCTURES Project Management Office is happy to answer questions and to receive feedback.
Current state-of-the-art machine learning methods impress with their capabilities for prediction, classification, or when solving even complex analytical tasks in the case of large language models. However, these methods often appear as a "black box" from the outside which makes it hard to understand how a result was achieved. In his talk on Interpretable Representations and Neuro-symbolic Methods in Deep Learning on April 19, 2023 (11:00 am), Jan Stühmer will discuss several approaches to interpretability in machine learning. The talk will take place in the DKFZ Lecture Hall, Communication Center, INF 280. Jan Stühmer is junior group leader at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies and Juniorprofessor at KIT.
For further information, see the talk announcement by the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ).
We are delighted to announce the compact course on The gradient flow structure of mean curvature flow by Prof Tim Laux, expert for applied geometric analysis at University of Bonn, who is currently staying in Heidelberg as a guest of STRUCTURES. The courses will take place from Tuesday, April 18 to April 26, 14h-16h, respectively. Please find the abstract attached below:
Title: The gradient flow structure of mean curvature flow
Abstract: Mean curvature flow is the most basic geometric evolution equation for embedded surfaces. Folklore says that it can be viewed as a gradient flow. This course aims at making this statement more precise and harnessing this structure for rigorous analysis. After a brief introduction to the field, I will present some of the ideas behind the (conditional) existence and (weak-strong) uniqueness theory for solutions to mean curvature flow. Focusing on the simple two-phase case, i.e., the evolution of a closed hypersurface, allows for a self-contained and concise presentation, which is accessible for graduate students (master or PhD) with some background in PDEs and functional analysis. The course is structured into four lectures as follows. The first lecture provides an overview, basic examples, and some motivation from numerics and data science. In the second lecture, I'll discuss different weak solution concepts, present a (conditional) closure theorem and relate different solution concepts. The third lecture is devoted to the weak-strong uniqueness principle via a concept of gradient flow calibrations. In the last lecture, I'll show how to use this structure for proving optimal convergence rates for numerical schemes.

The Human Brain Project's podcast Episode 7 features STRUCTURES external member Mihai A. Petrovici, who leads the Neuro-inspired Theory, Modeling and Applications (NeuroTMA) group at the University of Bern. In the new podcast episode, he talks about the intersection of biological and artificial intelligence, and his experience of growing up in a family of physicists. Mihai Petrovici is a leading scientist in the Human Brain Project, which aims to put in place a cutting-edge research infrastructure that will allow scientific and industrial researchers to advance our knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing, and brain-related medicine.

In addition, this month's podcast episode of Exzellent Erklärt deals with cyber security. In the new episode featuring the cluster of excellence CASA “Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries”, Prof. Eike Kiltz talks about an algorithm that protects our data even from quantum computers in the age of large-scale cyber attacks. The German science podcast “Exzellent Erklärt - Spitzenforschung für alle” reflects the research diversity of Germany’s leading research institutions and Clusters of Excellence: from Antiquities to Quantum Physics. In each episode, listeners can expect insights into the interdisciplinary work of one research network.
Weblinks:- Human Brain Project Podcast Ep. 7: The intersection of biological and artificial intelligence with Mihai Petrovici (YouTube)
- Exzellent erklärt podcast: https://exzellent-erklaert.podigee.io/.