Mathematics
A large proportion of research in this field takes place in connection with the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TR45 “Periods, moduli spaces and arithmetic of algebraic varieties”. The Faculty of Mathematics has been one of its three locations since July 2007. This is a joint research project between mathematicians at the Universities of Bonn, Mainz and Duisburg-Essen and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. The SFB/Transregio is under the lead management of Mainz, with the mathematicians from Duisburg-Essen accounting for approximately
40 percent of the total volume of nearly 2 million euros per year. The first funding period is for four years, after which two four-year extensions are possible pending successful evaluation. Part of this SFB/Transregio is a graduate programme. Members of the team in Duisburg-Essen are
Professors Hélène Esnault, Ulrich Goertz, Georg Hein, Marc Levine (lead scientist in Duisburg-Essen), Gabor Wiese and their working groups. Cooperation with Bonn and Mainz is well established, with three of the applicants there having written their habilitation theses in Duisburg-Essen. With the aforementioned research groups and the Institute for Experimental Mathematics, the Faculty is an internationally recognised centre for algebraic and arithmetic geometry, a role which participation in SFB/TR45 has additionally reinforced.
The members of the SFB/TR45 also have other third party funds at their disposal: Hélène Esnault has funds remaining from the Leibniz award (around 300,000 euros), and a new ERC Advanced Grant (Principal Investigator: Professor Hélène Esnault, around 894,000 euros for 5 years) was recently awarded. These funds have made it possible to establish a very active research group of mathematicians from many countries.
The members of the SFB have contact to many mathematicians around the world, including close cooperation since 2008 with the Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi, Vietnam, in training Vietnamese mathematicians. Every year, four Vietnamese students come to the University of Duisburg-Essen to complete the second year of their Master’s degree. At a later stage the cooperation could be extended to include doctoral students and become part of the “International Graduate School of Mathematics”.
Various research activities were supported
by the Humboldt professorship of Marc Levine. A total of 6 new postdocs are being financed with third-party funds.
The Faculty welcomed the arrival of Moritz Kerz and his Emmy Noether Group to the University of Duisburg-Essen in autumn 2009.
Awards and Distinctions
- Gabor Wiese: Gottschalk-Diederich-Baedeker Prize 2010
- Adrian Langer: Bessel Research Award of the Humboldt Foundation. He will spend one year at the Faculty from February 2011.
Conference organisation
In February 2010, the “Conference on algebraic geometry and arithmetic” welcomed 150 participants from all over the world, including USA, Japan, France, Turkey, Poland, Vietnam, Israel, Italy, Korea and Finland. The conference was dedicated to Eckart Viehweg. It was also attended by Fields Medalist Ngˆo and Alexander Beilinson.