Our research groups

All our research groups belong to one of the following key areas:

Algebraic geometry and arithmetic

Analysis, numerical analysis and optimisation

Stochastics

Mathematics education

They are closely interconnected. Our research groups have been able to secure external funding for their projects across the board, which confirms the success of our strategic orientation. During the reporting period, our faculty members were funded within the scope of five Priority Programmes of the German Research Foundation (DFG), three research training groups, two Collaborative Research Centres (SFB) and one European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, in which they were involved either as leaders or scientific contributors. Further funding sources include other DFG projects, the Humboldt Foundation, various programmes of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and other research institutions. The past two years saw several highlights, including Professor Marc Levine’s acquisition of the ERC Advanced Grant ‘QUADAG – Quadratic refinements in algebraic geometry’ and the establishment of the new research training group ‘symmetries and Classifying Spaces: Analytic, Arithmetic and Derived’ at the Essen Seminar for Algebraic Geometry and Arithmetic.

Funded by a multitude of external sources, our research projects allow us to integrate our research groups into national and international networks and organise international conferences, workshops and summer schools in Essen. They also attract many academics from Germany and abroad, who bring their own projects with them. Two Heisenberg fellows, Andreas Nickel and André Chatzistamatiou, have chosen our Faculty as the basis for their research. The international researchers Professor Paul Arne Østvær, Professor Kazim Büyükboduk, Dr Daniel Kohen and Dr Mingshuo Zhou came to our faculty as visiting scholars with funds from the Humboldt Foundation, other exchange programmes and their own contributions. A very high percentage of researchers working on the projects of our research groups have an international background. Two Mercator fellows at the newly established research training group further strengthen this international exchange. The international master’s degree programme of the ALGANT Network attracts outstanding, advanced students from all over the world to Essen. They join us at an early stage of their university education and often go on to have a successful academic career after graduating.

In the following section, we take our readers on a tour of our key research areas by presenting a select few projects. A full overview would exceed the scope of this report. The universal nature of mathematical structures is a recurring topic at our faculty. Although it is often applied to specific issues in a narrow field, it can express and explain a wide variety of phenomena across disciplines. Our tour takes us from basic research in the field of number theory to partial differential equations and our application-motivated projects. On the way, we will pass financial mathematics, superconductivity and projects focusing on digital transformation and inclusion in mathematical education.