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Modellansatz - English episodes only: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Gudrun Thäter, Sebastian Ritterbusch
On closer inspection, we find science and especially mathematics throughout our everyday lives, from the tap to automatic speed regulation on motorways, in medical technology or on our mobile phone. What the researchers, graduates and academic teachers in Karlsruhe puzzle about, you experience firsthand in our podcast "The modeling approach".
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- Aug 21, 202629 min
DEI in Math
This episode was recorded in July 2026. Gudrun speaks with Chiara Sabadin. She is currently a researcher in Mathematics Education, with a focus in Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) in Mathematics and founder and co-lead of the Women in Mathematics group of the University of Regensburg. Previously, she has completed a PhD in Pure Mathematics in June 2026 at the University of Regensburg, supported by the SFB 1085 “Higher Invariants” and the DFG, with a work on "A cohomological version of Ribet's Method" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Guido Kings. Even before, she completed her Master in Mathematics through the ALGANT Master program, studying at University of Padova for the first year and at the University of Regensburg for the second. In her free time, Chiara has also started social media channels under the pseudonyme @a_life_with_math with the intent of making mathematics more accessible and inclusive to a broader audience, showing and explaining how maths permeates everyday life and also reflecting on her own experiences as a mathematics researcher and as a woman in the field. Nowadays the ”leaky pipeline” phenomenon of women in mathematics academia, i.e. women in mathematics who opt out of an academic career, is largely recognised. Often the environment in the departments does not feel welcoming to everyone, leading some of their members to face or feel discrimination. Since first-hand experiences are nowhere to be found Chiara and her colleagues Malena Wasmeier and Eleni Hübner-Rosenau made an online survey for mathematics students and researchers in autumn 2025, and, in this episode, Chiara tells us more about it, sharing some insights from it. It consisted of the following open-texted questions: Q1 Do you think that it is important and/or a current issue to discuss about gender diversity and inclusivity in mathematics? Why? Q2 How do you balance work and personal life? In particular, do you think that working in academia affects your personal choices (e.g. creating a family, having children,...)? How and why? Do you think it is a problem? If so, do you have any ideas about solutions? Q3 Gender quotas and their effects: Have you ever experienced positive or negative effects of them? If so, which ones? Have you ever had the feeling ”I am here only because I am a woman/from an underrepresented background - I don’t actually deserve it”? If so, how did you deal with it? Q4 There aren’t so many women/from an underrepresented background mathematicians in advanced roles (e.g. according to M. Infusino, Women in Mathematics Germany, in 2014 only 14% of professors in Germany were women). Have you ever felt a lack of these role models? If so, how do you think this affected you and nowadays affects the future generation of mathematicians? Q5 If you have ever menstruated, have you ever experienced that period “affected” your work life? If so, how? Q6 Mathematicians and women/from an underrepresented background mathematicians are very much stereotyped. Which common misconceptions about them do you think there are and why do you think they aren’t the truth? A total of 125 persons from all over the world, from bachelor students to senior professors, participated in the survey, leading to some interesting reflections.
- Jun 19, 202643 min
Fractional Laplacian
Gudrun talks with Debajyoti Choudhuri. He is staying at KIT as a short term guest. He is Associate Professor in the School of Basic Sciences at IIT Bhubaneswar, India. He did his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Hyderabad. His research interest lies in the analysis of elliptic PDEs using Functional Analytic and topological methods. In this he touches and has a slight overlap with the research of Gudrun. The conversation starts with the discussion about a small paper which Debajyoti put on the archiv. It is about understanding how to work with the Fractional Laplacian. This means extending the classical Laplace operator Δ to non-integer powers. This operator is the main part in PDEs which model, e.g, anomalous diffusion, probability theory, image processing, finance, and nonlocal mechanics. (-Δ)s, where s is in (0,1). What makes It different to the ordinary Laplacian? While the traditional Laplace operator is local, i.e. it depends only on values of u and its derivatives near x, the fractional Laplacian is nonlocal, it depends on values of u everywhere in space. Thus, for the analytical and numerical treatment one needs very different methods. There are several possible definitions. Some of them can be found in the Wikipedia article which is cited below. On ℝn, the cleanest definition is the Fourier definition which follows the idea: Take the Fourier transform. Multiply by |ξ|2s. Transform back. In the short paper which is discussed the singular integral definition is used: For s in (0,1): (-Δ)^s u(x) = C(n,s) PV ∫ [u(x) - u(y)] / |x - y|^(n + 2s) dy This makes the nonlocality explicit: every point y contributes to the value at x. The method central in studying Laplace problems is variational. It considers an (infinite) family of generalised problems and works on the existence of so-called weak solutions. These problems are formulated with the help of . The weak solution for the Laplace problem is an element of the space H1=W1,2. This means the solution and its (generalised) gradient are bounded in L2 in the domain in which the problem is solved. This has physical meaning and due to known properties (embedding) of Sobolev spaces the pointwise (strong) solutions often can be constructed when enough regularitiy of the weak solutions is proved. Fractional Laplacians naturally live in fractional Sobolev spaces. These are not that easy to connect to physical properties and a few of the equivalent definitions in the context of classical Sobolev spaces are not equivalent any more everywhere. Common approaches for numerics for PDEs including the fractional Laplacian are: Fourier spectral methods (periodic domains), Finite element methods for fractional PDEs, Matrix-function methods (As), Caffarelli–Silvestre extension methods, Quadrature approximations of singular integrals. The Extension trick introduced by Caffarelli and Silvestre in 2007 (their original paper is cited below) is also discussed as part of the short note. p-laplacian augurs well in the sense because the unicity of the definitions of the s-laplacian is still lacking. The conversation then turns to how Debajyoti found his way into mathematics and the topic of PDEs and how life and work feel like in his university.
- Jun 7, 202622 min
LLM statistics
This episode was recorded in March 2026. Gudrun speaks again with Nadja Klein and Moussa Kassem Sbeyti who work at the Scientific Computing Center (SCC) at KIT in Karlsruhe. As a new person in our conversation we welcome Nicolas Bianco. The research of the scientists in Nadja's MBD Lab is at the intersection of statistics and machine learning. It spans theoretical analysis, method development and real-world applications. Last time we focussed on Baysian statistics. With the help of Nicolas we want to examplify how interdisciplinary work is done and how his journey led him into this field of research. Since in this episode we very much focussed on Nicolas decision process and steps in his carrier we plan to have an episode on the topics later in the year.
- May 2, 202535 min
Bayesian Learning
In this episode Gudrun speaks with Nadja Klein and Moussa Kassem Sbeyti who work at the Scientific Computing Center (SCC) at KIT in Karlsruhe. Since August 2024, Nadja has been professor at KIT leading the research group Methods for Big Data (MBD) there. She is an Emmy Noether Research Group Leader, and a member of AcademiaNet, and Die Junge Akademie, among others. In 2025, Nadja was awarded the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) Emerging Leader Award (ELA). The COPSS ELA recognizes early career statistical scientists who show evidence of and potential for leadership and who will help shape and strengthen the field. She finished her doctoral studies in Mathematics at the Universität Göttingen before conducting a postdoc at the University of Melbourne as a Feodor-Lynen fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Afterwards she was a Professor for Statistics and Data Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin before joining KIT. Moussa joined Nadja's lab as an associated member in 2023 and later as a postdoctoral researcher in 2024. He pursued a PhD at the TU Berlin while working as an AI Research Scientist at the Continental AI Lab in Berlin. His research primarily focuses on deep learning, developing uncertainty-based automated labeling methods for 2D object detection in autonomous driving. Prior to this, Moussa earned his M.Sc. in Mechatronics Engineering from the TU Darmstadt in 2021. The research of Nadja and Moussa is at the intersection of statistics and machine learning. In Nadja's MBD Lab the research spans theoretical analysis, method development and real-world applications. One of their key focuses is Bayesian methods, which allow to incorporate prior knowledge, quantify uncertainties, and bring insights to the “black boxes” of machine learning. By fusing the precision and reliability of Bayesian statistics with the adaptability of machine and deep learning, these methods aim to leverage the best of both worlds. The KIT offers a strong research environment, making it an ideal place to continue their work. They bring new expertise that can be leveraged in various applications and on the other hand Helmholtz offers a great platform in that respect to explore new application areas. For example Moussa decided to join the group at KIT as part of the Helmholtz Pilot Program Core-Informatics at KIT (KiKIT), which is an initiative focused on advancing fundamental research in informatics within the Helmholtz Association. Vision models typically depend on large volumes of labeled data, but collecting and labeling this data is both expensive and prone to errors. During his PhD, his research centered on data-efficient learning using uncertainty-based automated labeling techniques. That means estimating and using the uncertainty of models to select the helpful data samples to train the models to label the rest themselves. Now, within KiKIT, his work has evolved to include knowledge-based approaches in multi-task models, eg. detection and depth estimation — with the broader goal of enabling the development and deployment of reliable, accurate vision systems in real-world applications. (...)
- Jun 1, 202240 min
Spectral Geometry
Gudrun talks with Polyxeni Spilioti at Aarhus university about spectral geometry. Before working in Aarhus Polyxeni was a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Anton Deitmar at the University of Tübingen. She received her PhD from the University of Bonn, under the supervision of Werner Mueller after earning her Master's at the National and Technical University of Athens (Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Physics). As postdoc she was also guest at the MPI for Mathematics in Bonn, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in Paris and the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics. In her research she works on questions like: How can one obtain information about the geometry of a manifold, such as the volume, the curvature, or the length of the closed geodesics, provided that we can study the spectrum of certain differential operators? Harmonic analysis on locally symmetric spaces provides a powerful machinery in studying various invariants, such as the analytic torsion, as well as the dynamical zeta functions of Ruelle and Selberg.
- Jan 27, 202253 min
Allyship
One of the reasons we started this podcast in 2013 was to provide a more realistic picture of mathematics and of the way mathematicians work. On Nov. 19 2021 Gudrun talked to Stephanie Anne Salomone who is Professor and Chair in Mathematics at the University of Portland. She is also Director of the STEM Education and Outreach Center and Faculty Athletic Representative at UP. She is an Associate Director of Project NExT, a program of the Mathematical Association of America that provides networking and professional development opportunities to mathematics faculty who are new to our profession. She is a wife and mother of three boys, Milo (13), Jude (10), and Theodore (8). This conversation started on Twitter in the summer of 2021. There Stephanie (under the twitter handle @SitDownPee) and @stanyoshinobu Dr. Stan Yoshinobu invited their fellow mathematicians to the following workshop: Come help us build gender equity in mathematics! Picture a Mathematician workshop led by @stanyoshinobu Dr. Stan Yoshinobu and me, designed for men in math, but all genders welcome. Gudrun was curious to learn more and followed the provided link: Gender equity in the mathematical sciences and in the academy broadly is not yet a reality. Women (and people of color, and other historically excluded groups) are confronted with systemic biases, daily experiences, feelings of not being welcome or included, that in the aggregate push them out of the mathematical sciences. This workshop is designed primarily for men in math (although all genders are welcome to participate) to inform and inspire them to better see some of the key issues with empathy, and then to take action in creating a level-playing field in the academy. Workshop activities include viewing “Picture a Scientist” before the workshop, a 2-hour synchronous workshop via zoom, and follow-up discussions via email and Discord server. *All genders welcome AND this workshop is designed for men to be allies. This idea resonated strongly with Gudrun's experiences: Of course women and other groups which are minorities in research have to speak out to fight for their place but things move forward only if people with power join the cause. At the moment people with power in mathematical research mostly means white men. That is true for the US where Stephanie is working as well as in Germany. Allyship is a concept which was introduced by people of colour to name white people fighting for racial justice at their side. Of course, it is a concept which helps in all situations where a group is less powerful than another. Men working for the advancement of non-male mathematicians is strictly necessary in order for equality of chances and a diversity of people in mathematics to be achieved in the next generation. And to be clear: this has nothing to do with counting heads but it is about not ruining the future of mathematics as a discipline by creating obstacles for mathematicians with minoritized identities. (...)
- Feb 27, 202045 min
Photoacoustic Tomography
In March 2018 Gudrun had a day available in London when travelling back from the FENICS workshop in Oxford. She contacted a few people working in mathematics at the University College London (ULC) and asked for their time in order to talk about their research. In the end she brought back three episodes for the podcast. This is the second of these conversations. Gudrun talks to Marta Betcke. Marta is associate professor at the UCL Department of Computer Science, member of Centre for Inverse Problems and Centre for Medical Image Computing. She has been in London since 2009. Before that she was a postdoc in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester working on novel X-ray CT scanners for airport baggage screening. This was her entrance into Photoacoustic tomography (PAT), the topic Gudrun and Marta talk about at length in the episode. PAT is a way to see inside objects without destroying them. It makes images of body interiors. There the contrast is due to optical absorption, while the information is carried to the surface of the tissue by ultrasound. This is like measuring the sound of thunder after lightning. Measurements together with mathematics provide ideas about the inside. The technique combines the best of light and sound since good contrast from optical part - though with low resolution - while ultrasound has good resolution but poor contrast (since not enough absorption is going on). In PAT, the measurements are recorded at the surface of the tissue by an array of ultrasound sensors. Each of that only detects the field over a small volume of space, and the measurement continues only for a finite time. In order to form a PAT image, it is necessary to solve an inverse initial value problem by inferring an initial acoustic pressure distribution from measured acoustic time series. In many practical imaging scenarios it is not possible to obtain the full data, or the data may be sub-sampled for faster data acquisition. Then numerical models of wave propagation can be used within the variational image reconstruction framework to find a regularized least-squares solution of an optimization problem. Assuming homogeneous acoustic properties and the absence of acoustic absorption the measured time series can be related to the initial pressure distribution via the spherical mean Radon transform. Integral geometry can be used to derive direct, explicit inversion formulae for certain sensor geometries, such as e.g. spherical arrays. At the moment PAT is predominantly used in preclinical setting, to image tomours and vasculature in small animals. Breast imaging, endoscopic fetus imaging as well as monitoring of perfusion and drug metabolism are subject of intensive ongoing research. The forward problem is related to the absorption of the light and modeled by the wave equation assuming instanteneous absorption and the resulting thearmal expansion. In our case, an optical ultrasound sensor records acoustic waves over time, (...)
- Feb 6, 202031 min
Waveguides
This is the third of three conversation recorded during the Conference on mathematics of wave phenomena 23-27 July 2018 in Karlsruhe. Gudrun is in conversation with Anne-Sophie Bonnet-BenDhia from ENSTA in Paris about transmission properties in perturbed waveguides. The spectral theory is essential to study wave phenomena. For instance, everybody has experimented with resonating frequencies in a bathtube filled with water. These resonant eigenfrequencies are eigenvalues of some operator which models the flow behaviour of the water. Eigenvalue problems are better known for matrices. For wave problems, we have to study eigenvalue problems in infinite dimension. Like the eigenvalues for a finite dimensional matrix the Spectral theory gives access to intrinisic properties of the operator and the corresponding wave phenomena. Anne-Sophie is interested in waveguides. For example, optical fibres can guide optical waves while wind instruments are guides for acoustic waves. Electromagnetic waveguides also have important applications. A practical objective is to optimize the transmission in a waveguide, even if there are some perturbations inside. It is known that for certain frequencies, there is no reflection by the perturbations but it is not apriori clear how to find these frequencies. Anne-Sophie uses complex analysis for that. The idea is to complexify the (originally real) coordinates by analytic extension. It is a classic idea for resonances that she adapts to the problem of transmission. This mathematical method of complex scaling is linked to the method of perfectly matched layers in numerics. It is used to solve problems set in unbounded domains on a computer by finite elements. Thanks to the complex scaling, she can solve a problem in a bounded domain, which reproduces the same behaviour as in the infinite domain. Finally, Anne-Sophie is able to get numerically a complex spectrum of frequencies, related to the quality of the transmission in a perturbed waveguide. The imaginary part of the complex quantity gives an indication of the quality of the transmission in the waveguide. The closer to the real axis the better the transmission.
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About Modellansatz - English episodes only
On closer inspection, we find science and especially mathematics throughout our everyday lives, from the tap to automatic speed regulation on motorways, in medical technology or on our mobile phone. What the researchers, graduates and academic teachers in Karlsruhe puzzle about, you experience firsthand in our podcast "The modeling approach".
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