News Overview
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.
Image copyright: LUMI/CSCInternational research team including STRUCTURES member Ralf Klessen receives computing time for simulating the behaviour of cosmic gases and plasmas during star formation
A Swiss-German interdisciplinary research team hopes to unlock the secrets of star formation using Europe’s fastest computer – the LUMI-G supercomputer in Kajaani (Finland) run by an international consortium. The researchers, including Heidelberg astrophysicists, aim to simulate the behaviour of gases and plasmas using a new simulation code called SPH-EXA. Project partner and STRUCTURES member Prof. Dr Ralf Klessen of Heidelberg University’s Centre for Astronomy (ZAH) anticipates groundbreaking insights for his own research: “With our simulations we are pursuing an approach that takes the particles of gases and plasmas into account to describe the movement of fluid elements in space. This allows us to make statements about the chaotic behaviour of turbulent streams or to better capture aspects of the transition from orderly to chaotic phases of the stream.” The computer experiment thereby opens up new avenues to better understand the formation of stars and star clusters in the turbulent multi-phase interstellar medium of galaxies such as our Milky Way.
Further information:
Click on the image to open the poster as PDFWe are delighted to announce this week's STRUCTURES Jour Fixe by Johan Sebastian Bonilla Castro on Identities and Cultures in the Natural Sciences, taking place this Friday, January 12, 1:30 pm at Philosophenweg 12 (GHs) and online. The pretalk will start at 1:00 pm.
Johan Sebastian Bonilla Castro is an Assistant Professor in Physics at Northeastern University, working within the CMS collaboration at CERN and involved in various dimensions of work in Diversity Equity and Inclusion. They are chair of the CERN LGBTQ Network and co-chair of the CMS Diversity & Inclusion Office.
Further information:
We are deligthed to announce that research from STRUCTURES' Comprehensive Project (CP 4: Quantum Structure and Dynamics) carried out by Celia Viermann and the group of Markus Oberthaler, in collaboration with external member Stefan Flörchinger, has made this year's Physics World list of Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year 2023. In their laboratory experiment, the researchers have succeeded in realizing a quantum simulation of a curved and expanding spacetime. Within an ultracold quantum gas, they were able to simulate an entire family of curved universes that can be manipulated, allowing to investigate and comapre different cosmological scenarios with the predictions of a quantum field theoretical model (see also this earlier news item for more details). The research results were published in Nature (see Viermann et al., 2022).
We are delighted to announce that a study from STRUCTURES' CP 6 (Networks and Machine Learning) carried out by Egzon Miftari, Filip Sadlo and Daniel Durstewitz has been awarded one of the prestigious Best Paper Award of the IEEE VIS 23, the premier conference for visualization and visual analytics. The award is considered one of the most renowned awards for publications in this field of research. In their work, the researchers extend vector field topology to discontinuous but piecewise-continuous vector fields, by providing extraction techniques for Filippov systems and extending these systems with non-unique transport. This enables visualizing and exploring the behaviors of complex flow with discontinuities, which is extremely important in many engineering and application fields. An overview of this work can be found in this year's CP 6 project report by Egzon Miftari and Filip Sadlo featured in STRUCTURES News (October 2023), page 3.
Further information and links:
Prof. Guy Wolf (MILA / Université de Montréal, Canada, picture used with kind permission)We are delighted to announce that Prof Guy Wolf, CIFAR AI Chair at MILA, Montreal, and Associate Professor at Université de Montréal, will be joining Heidelberg University for a research stay at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) and STRUCTURES in early 2024, as part of the competitive Humboldt Research Fellowship Programme.
The Humboldt Research Fellowship enables outstanding researchers to conduct their own research in collaboration with a host at a German research institution of their choice, fostering a dynamic exchange of knowledge and expertise. During his stay in Heidelberg, Prof Wolf will also hold a one-week compact course for MSc and PhD students.
Prof Wolf's research focuses at the intersection of machine learning, data science and applied mathematics. He is particularly interested in data mining methods utilizing manifold learning and deep geometric learning, as well as applications for exploratory analysis of biomedical data. His multidisciplinary approach integrates machine learning, signal processing, and applied mathematics to discover patterns, dynamics, and structures in large high-dimensional datasets.
We eagerly welcome Prof Wolf and anticipate the fruitful collaborative exchange!
Further information:
Click on the image to open the poster as PDF.We are happy to announce the next Scientific Machine Learning event from the series “Machine Learning Galore!”, which will take place on January 18 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm in INF 205 Mathematikon (5th floor). The event will include various lab presentations and science talks:
Machine Learning galore! - Programme:
- Lab presentations:
- Tristan Bereau, Fred Hamprecht, Caroline Heneka
- Rocket Science:
- Tristan Bereau: Machine learning representation for molecular dynamics
- Roman Remme (Hamprecht lab): Machine Learning meets Density Functional Theory
- Lara Alegre (Heneka lab): Machine Learning for large radio surveys
To help plan the catering, please register for free until Jan 15 via this webpage.
Scientific Machine Learning is a joint initiative from IWR and STRUCTURES to foster interactions within and development of the local machine learning community. Its portal, http://mlai.uni-heidelberg.de summarizes the many relevant events and news from across campus that would otherwise remain scattered across single institutions or fields. The goal of the initiative aligns with the STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence's objective of driving research into the fundamental understanding of current and future machine learning, and with IWR’s aim to leverage machine learning to enable the solution of long-standing problems in the natural and life sciences, the engineering sciences, as well as the humanities.
Further information and links:
- Scientific Machine Learning (MLAI) homepage
- Machine Learning Talks on Campus – Information service and mailing list
- Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR)
Click on the image to open the Newsletter as PDF.We are happy to present the 14th volume of the STRUCTURES Newsletter with the following topics:
- KFT Reproduces Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
- Congratulations to Anja Randecker and Felix Joos!
- A New Analytical Approach to Structure Formation in Ultracold Plasmas
- Cosmology Question of the Week
- We Are STRUCTURES
- STRUCTURES Asks: Anja Randecker
The STRUCTURES Project Management Office is happy to answer questions and to receive feedback.
The STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence is proud to announce that two of its members, Prof Dr Simon Anders and Dr Dylan Nelson, have been recognized as "Highly Cited Researchers" in the latest international evaluation conducted by the analytics company Clarivate.
The “Highly Cited Researchers” list includes a total of 20 disciplines from the natural, life and social sciences as well as the cross-field category, recognizing researchers with an outstanding track-record of publications across several disciplines. The latest list of highly cited researchers assessed publications between 2012 and 2022. Highly cited publications are those in the top 1% by citations in their respective field and year of publication.
Prof Dr Simon Anders (Biology/Biochemistry):
Prof Dr Simon Anders is heading the Bioinformatics tools for omics data group at BioQuant and ZMBH. Within STRUCTUREShe is part of Comprehensive Project (CP) 3: From Molecules to Cells and Tissue, and involved in Exploratory Project (EP) 9.9: Mathematical modelling and model-based data analysis of structured stem cell systems. His research involves developing computational tools for biologists to analyze and interpret high-throughput assay data, particularly in sequencing, visual exploration of large datasets, and integrating transcriptomics and proteomics in functional genomics and systems medicine.
Dr Dylan Nelson (Astrophysics):
Dr Dylan Nelson is heading the "Computational Galaxy Formation and Evolution" Emmy Noether Junior Research Group at the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics of the Center for Astrophysics (ZAH) at Heidelberg University. Within STRUCTUREShe is involved in Comprehensive Project (CP) 1: Cosmic Structure Formation. Dylan Nelson's research focus is developing and analyzing theoretical (computational) models of galaxy formation and evolution, with an emphasis on cosmic gas. He is also a leader within the IllustrisTNG Project, and Co-PI of TNG50: next-generation large-volume cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations of galaxy and large-scale structure formation and of the TNG-Cluster simulation.