Past Visitors

Mog Stapleton

Visit from 2022/06/10 - 2023/03/31

Mog Stapleton is a researcher at East China Normal University. Her background is in cognitive science and philosophy (with master's degrees in both). She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2012. Her research focuses on embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended (so-called "4E") approaches and on the importance of affect for cognitive science. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Cognitive Systems Research. Google Scholar

TSVP Talk: "A Body-First Approach to Cognitive Science" on November 24, 2022 at 4pm in L4E48
Office at OIST: L4F22d

Timothy O'Leary

Visit from 2022/12/06 - 2023/03/12

Timothy O’Leary is Professor of Information Engineering and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. His research uses concepts and methods from systems theory and control engineering to understand the brain at the cellular and network level. He trained in pure mathematics and obtained his PhD in biophysics and physiology at the University of Edinburgh. He then worked with Eve Marder as Swartz Theoretical Neuroscience Fellow in Brandeis University before starting his group in Cambridge in 2016. Google Scholar

TSVP Talk: "Feedback Control and Variability in the Nervous System" on January 12, 2023 at 4pm in L4E48
Office at OIST: L4E25j

Guido Boffetta

Visit from 2022/12/02 - 2023/01/28

Guido Boffetta is professor of theoretical physics of matter at the University of Torino (Italy). He works in fluid dynamics, in particular turbulence, turbulent convection and mixing. He is fellow of the European Mechanics Society and associate editor of Physical Review Fluids (APS). Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Time Irreversibility in Turbulence" on December 15, 2022 at 4pm in L4E48
Office at OIST: L4F22d

Kyoji Saito

Visit from 2022/09/11 - 2023/01/15

Kyoji Saito is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo, and a Professor Emeritus at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences of Kyoto University. His research area covers complex algebraic geometry, representation theory and mathematical physics. In particular, the theory of primitive forms, which he has developed, plays the role of mirror symmetry between complex geometry and mathematical physics. Inspired by these facts, he is now developing a new type infinite dimensional Lie theory, including elliptic Lie algebras and their representations. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Platon's Symmetry" on October 6, 2022 at 4pm in L4E48
Office at OIST: L4E13

Leon Loveridge

Visit from 2022/08/15 - 2022/12/15

Leon Loveridge is an associate professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway. His research interests are in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, where he aims to understand the physical content of the theory through the lens of mathematics. Recent work is largely focused on quantum reference frames and general probabilistic theories. He has side interests in pure mathematics (mostly functional analysis and operator theory), and the history and philosophy of science, particularly quantum theory. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: What Is Quantum Mechanics About? on September 15, 2022 at 4pm in L4E48
Office at OIST: L4E25j

Takashi Ikegami

Visit from 2022/08/08 - 2022/12/19

Takashi Ikegami is a Professor at the Department of General Systems, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo. He works in the area of artificial life research. His simulation and experimental research interests include open-ended evolution in artificial life models, experiments with self-moving droplets, large-scale Boids models, and new theories of collective intelligence. He also conducts experiments on consciousness using an android (ALTER-3). At the same time, he has presented performance art (Kugutsu Kagura2020) with ALTER-3 and VR (SnowCrash at WhiteHouse 2021, Reverse Destiny Bridge at AICHI2022). Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Collective Intelligence in Living/Nonliving Systems" on September 29, 2022 at 4pm in L4E48

Mark Wildon

Visit from 2022/10/04 - 2022/11/10

Mark Wildon is a professor of mathematics at Royal Holloway, University of London, visiting the University of Bristol in 2021–22. His interests are in algebraic combinatorics and representation theory, especially the representation theory of the symmetric groups and related algebras. Personal Homapage

TSVP Talk: "Primes, Partitions and Power Series" on October 20, 2022 at 4pm
Office at OIST: L4F22d

Sebastiano Nicolussi Golo

Visit from 2022/08/05 - 2022/10/31

Sebastiano Nicolussi Golo is a postdoc in mathematics at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland (EU). He works on the interface between metric analysis and Lie group theory. He has worked in sub-Riemannian geometry and later he expanded his interests to geometric measure theory on Lie groups equipped with non-Riemannian distances. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Jyväskylä in 2017. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Sub-Riemannian Geometry Is Everywhere!" on September 9, 2022 at 10:40am
Office at OIST: L4E25j

Robert Osburn

Visit from 2022/06/09 - 2022/09/01

Robert Osburn is an associate professor at University College Dublin. He completed his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 2001 in the fields of algebraic K-theory and number theory. His recent work has focused on special functions, modular forms, combinatorics and quantum knot invariants. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Knots and Modularity" on July 7, 2022 at 4pm

Merav Stern

Visit from 2022/07/18 - 2022/08/14

Merav Stern is a theoretical neuroscientist. Her research unveils the relationships between neural activity and connectivity, in both biological and artificial neural networks by improving the tools for studying non-linear dynamical system. She completed her PhD with honors at the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at Hebrew University while collaborating with Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. She won the Zuckerman leadership scholarship and worked at the Swartz Theory Center at the University of Washington. She is currently a postdoc at the Hebrew University, collaborating with the University of Oregon. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Modeling Networks Reveals How Neural Connectivity Transforms Space Into Time" on August 9, 2022 at 10am

Kerstin Lenk

Visit from 2022/07/18 - 2022/08/18

Kerstin Lenk is an assistant professor of Computational Neuroscience at the Graz University of Technology in Austria. She has received a PhD in Computer Science from the Clausthal University of Technology in Germany. Her group focuses on the development of computational single-cell astrocyte and neuron-astrocyte network models in healthy conditions and pathologies like epilepsy and schizophrenia. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Modeling Neuron-Astrocyte Interactions in the Brain" on August 4, 2022 at 4pm

Dana Ballard

Visit from 2022/06/23 - 2022/08/19

Dana Ballard is a professor of Computer Science. His focus is on reverse engineering the brain where models of the brain are motivated by the technical problems the Brain’s circuits solve. These modules combine data from Neuroscience and Psychology as well Computer Science. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "A Generative Model of Communication in the Brain" on July 21, 2022 at 4pm

Shiro Ikeda

Visit from 2022/05/09 - 2022/07/31

Shiro Ikeda is a professor at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics. He has been working in the field of applied mathematics, which includes, but is not limited to, signal processing, information theory, information geometry, statistics, and astrostatistics. Personal Homepage

TSVP Talk: "Data Science for the EHT Blackhole Shadow Imaging" on June 2, 2022 at 4pm (click the title to view the recording)

Leenoy Meshulam

Visit from 2022/05/09 - 2022/07/31 and
2023/02/05 - 2023/02/23

Leenoy Meshulam is a Swartz Theory Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Washington, Seattle. She works at the interface of physics and neuroscience, mainly drawing on theoretical frameworks from statistical physics and dynamical systems to uncover principles of brain function.  She is particularly interested in how function emerges from the coordinated activity of large neuronal populations. Dr. Meshulam received her PhD from Princeton University in 2018. Prior to that she completed her undergraduate and masters at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Here at OIST she is looking forward to fruitful interactions and collaborations. 

TSVP Talk: "Can We Hope for Simplicity When Describing the Brain?" on June 23, 2022 at 4pm
Office at OIST: L4F22d

Chris Bowman

Visit from 2022/04/06 - 2022/05/02

Chris Bowman is a Reader at the University of York. His interests are in the combinatorics and representation theories of diagrammatic algebras (for example symmetric groups, KLR algebras, and diagrammatic Soergel bimodules). Before his current position, he was a reader at the University of Kent,  held a research fellowship from Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 at City University of London, and had a postdoc with Eric Vasserot at Paris 7.  His PhD was at Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 2008-2012. Personal website

TSVP Talk: "Diagrammatic Algebra" on April 19, 2022 at 4pm

Daniel Bulmash

Visit from 2022/03/21 - 2022/07/03

Dr. Danny Bulmash is a postdoctoral researcher in theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his Ph.D. in 2017 from Stanford University. His research interests are in proposing, classifying, and probing novel phases of matter, with particular expertise in topological phases. Google Scholar

TSVP Talk: "From Coffee Cups to Conductivity: Topological Phases of Matter and Beyond" on June 16, 2022 at 4pm

Paolo Piovano

Visit in 2020

Paolo Piovano is a group leader/Privatdozent at the University of Vienna. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, in August 2012 under the supervision of Irene Fonseca and Giovanni Leoni. After a postdoctoral position of one year at the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technology in Pavia under the mentorship of Ulisse Stefanelli, he has been employed at the University of Vienna, Austria as Universitätsassistent. Since September 2017 he is group leader at the University of Vienna of the research group “Variational Methods and Applications” (www.univie.ac.at/variationalmethods/). Dr. Piovano obtained the Austrian habilitation in Mathematics (venia docendi) at the University of Vienna in November 2019 and the Italian national habilitation in June 2020. Full Profile

James McCoy

Visit in 2020

James McCoy is an Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle. He completed his PhD in pure mathematics in 2002 under the supervision of Klaus Ecker at Monash University. The title of his thesis was "The surface area preserving mean curvature flow". After completing post-doctoral positions at the Australian National University, in 2005 he took up an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship as part of a joint ARC grant with Ben Andrews.  In July that year he moved to the University of Wollongong, combining a lecturing position with the ARC research grant. In January 2018 he moved to the University of Newcastle where he is now Head of Mathematics Discipline. Full Profile

Andrew Lobb

Visit in 2020

Andrew Lobb is an Associate Professor at Durham University. He was an undergraduate at Oxford University and then took up a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard University for his PhD studies.  During these studies, he became interested in low-dimensional topology and wrote his thesis on applications of quantum knot invariants to 4-dimensional problems. Dr. Lobb moved back to the UK for a postdoctoral position at Imperial College London, then returned to the USA for second postdoc at Stony Brook which included six months leave to take part in a program at MSRI.  He arrived at Durham University in 2011 as an Assistant Professor, being promoted to Associate Professor in 2015. Full Profile