WIAS PhD Group
Apes together strong.
© Felix Sauer and Moritz Gau.
To the website of the group of PhD students at the Weierstrass-Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics!
Following the results of the election from June 21st, we are happy to welcome Felix Sauer and Moritz Gau as our new PhD representatives! We are incredibly grateful to Marwa Zainelabdeen and Michael Tsopanopoulos for their dedication and commitment during their terms! 🙏 We look forward to an exciting new chapter with Felix and Moritz! 🎉
Some suggested reading:
Talks are not the same as papers by Terence Tao.
Advices for dealing with a math bully by Fan Chung Graham.
A few words on research for graduate students by Fan Chung Graham.
A mathematics research conference by Katharine A. Ott.
| Date | Contribution |
|---|---|
| 22.09.2026 At 11:30 in video conference room in HVP 11A | Peteris Silins (LG 6) Probabilistic Methods for Dynamic Communication Networks Abstract: The contact process is a classical stochastic model of epidemic spread for which infected vertices recover at rate and the infection is transmitted along each edge at rate . Over an infinite graph the critical is the infection rate such that for all the infection started from finitely many vertices dies out almost surely. In this talk we focus on an infection over the Gilbert graph associated with a Poisson-Boolean model on whose radii are i.i.d. copies of a heavy-tailed random variable . Since the degree is unbounded and heavy-tailed, it is not clear whether the contact process even has a subcritical phase, i.e., whether . A promising approach to this is to use the framework of percolation by cumulative merging, in which case it can be shown that, for some heavy-tailed regimes, the infection can die out almost surely. |
The PhD lunch is still alive and happening regularly! 🌮
Every Tuesday at 12:30, you are happily invited to join us for lunch! We meet at Hausvogteiplatz and head to Mensa Süd in the HU main building! 🥪
As a result of the employee survey (Mitarbeiterbefragung MAB), a committee was set in place to develop appropriate measures for improving the working conditions at the institute.
One outgrowth of that was to institute a buddy group of volunteers who meet up monthly to offer a platform for discussing challenges and filling general gaps for newcomers to the WIAS.
See also:
the MAB committee's webpage (only reachable from within the WIAS via e.g. VPN)
You may have heard through the grapevine that the infamous WissZeitVG is currently in the process of being reformed.
While some suggestions seem to actually constitute an improvement - such as the plan to mandate (within limits) three-year contracts for newly hired PhDs - other parts of it have caused quite a stir in the German academic world. Most notably, the plan is to limit the maximum post-doc employment period under fixed-term contracts to only 3 years.
This has been met with severe criticism by labor unions, some research organizations and even professors who regard this development as significant in impacting the working conditions in academia in a negative fashion.
If you are interested in reading more about the general background and recent developments, especially from an English-speaking point of view, check out the following links:
Leibniz PostDoc Network: a network of postdoc scientists within the Leibniz Association engaging in information gathering, communcation, and advocacy.
#ProfsFürHanna: an alliance of professors who have co-signed an open letter calling for the revision of the proposed amendments to the WissZeitVG.
GEW [German]: Educators' and Scientists' Labor Union providing some details on the proposed amendments and reactions to them in German.
NGA - Network for Decent Labor in Academia [mostly German]: a network of mid-level academics in Germany engaged in information-gathering and advocacy for better working conditions in academia.
For German sources, we warmly recommend running bits of text through the DeepL Translator.
