OVERVIEW
ROLES AT IMM
2021
IMM International Faculty
Probability and Statistics
Course
Pakistan
Fall
ABOUT ME
Current involvements
I am a Senior Scientist at ETH D-Math, a member of the Global Young Academy and a European citizen by conviction. Born and raised in Germany, mathematics brought me to work at several amazing institutions across Europe, Northern America and Australia. As a fundamental scientist, my goal is to capture the qualitative and quantitative behavior of solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations, which can be perturbed by noise. I also have a degree in Protestant Theology, with a focus on ethics of technology. Since my time at the Munich Centre for Machine Learning, I combined both worlds through cross-disciplinary work in Digital Theology and AI ethics. My main projects included leveraging Machine Learning techniques for digital editions of biblical manuscripts, and algorithmizability of ethics.
In 2024, I was appointed topic expert, contributing in the background to the invaluable work of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board.
As member of the Global Young Academy, I do my best to strengthen the voice of young scholars worldwide and contribute to the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) https://coara.eu/. I was recently shortlisted for the European Commission's Group of Chief Scientific Advisors
Additional experiences
I do care a great deal about equal opportunities in academia. What I mean with this and why it is not (only) about women in maths you can read on my Unconscious bias 101 page. I engage in EWM and the SIG diversity of the DMV.
In 2020 I joined the volunteer faculty of the International Mathematics Master (IMM) contributing to capacity building in mathematics in developing countries.
I am passionate about maths communication and occasionally talk at Science Slams. I conduct freelance projects with IMAGINARY and am an editor of the Snapshots of Modern Mathematics from Oberwolfach.
I volunteered for many years at Studies Without Borders, among other duties coordinating their scholarship programme for students from the Northern Caucasus Region. The programme has won the 2011's Rector's award for extraordinary achievement of a student organization.
CURRICULUM
from 2024 to Present
Senior Research Scientist, ETH Zurich
Switzerland
from 2020 to Present
Associate Professor, University of Lund
Sweden
from 2019 to Present
IMM International Faculty, International Mathematics Master (IMM) Pakistan
International
MORE INFORMATION
My research
I am both a fundamental scientist and an ethics scholar, with relevant domain expertise in mathematics, artificial intelligence, climate modelling and ethics of technology. I investigate machine learning algorithms, evaluate their reliability and explainability, and draw attention to the ethical implications of our usage of this technology. I do fundamental research on large-scale geophysical flows and created a model to monitor CO2 emissions on a regional scale, which is important for policy decisions. My mathematical models appear as key working mechanisms from epidemiology, neurophysiology, to material sciences.
Having studied philosophy and theology, I know a diverse set of methodologies from the humanities and social sciences, which I applied in the last two years in interdisciplinary research in digital humanities (applied on 2000 year old papyrical manuscripts), and social sciences (gender studies, social migration).
Some words on my pure mathematics topics
Interacting Particle Systems
Interacting particle systems model complex phenomena in natural and social sciences. These phenomena involve a large number of interrelated components, which are modeled as particles confined to a lattice. I study so-called interacting diffusion models, i.e. I consider continuous on-site variables. Therefore my models take the form of a system of coupled stochastic differential equations. My goal is to describe the macroscopic behavior of the interacting diffusion as a nonlinear stochastic partial differential equation.
Gradient flows of non-convex potentials
Gradient flows describe the evolution of a system as the steepest descent of an energy potential. This means that our system is minimizing its energy over time. Non-convex potentials, appearing for example in phase transitions or image processing, give rise to forward-backward parabolic PDEs. I try to determine the regime of initial data under which we can prove existence of solutions to such PDEs. Moreover, I study the behavior and properties of solutions to forward-backward parabolic PDEs.
Methods of Statistical Mechanics in Turbulence
A very prominent feature of turbulent flows, which appear in fluid dynamics, meteorology and engineering (e.g. in combustion phenomena), is the spontaneous appearance of large-scale, long-lived vortices, e.g. Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Though the distributions of vorticity in the actual flow of normal fluids are continuous, in many cases a set of discrete vortices provides a reasonable approximation. I study these point vortex models with methods of statistical mechanics.