The undergraduate and postgraduate students in the elite TopMath programme work and research in many different areas of mathematics and are individually supervised by different chairs. To promote professional and social exchange, TopMath regularly organises events in various formats, such as the TopMath Talks, the Alumni Speakers Series and student meetings. The latter includes the Summer Meeting, which has been held annually since 2022, replacing the previous annual Winter Meeting. Students from different years go on a two to three day retreat to get to know each other, discuss their research and grow as a group in a relaxed but productive atmosphere.
Organisation 2024: Florian Grundbacher, Jamico Schade
Summer Meetup 2024: a student's report
For the 2024 summer meeting we travelled to the Josefstal youth centre near Schliersee in the foothills of the Alps. During the hour-long train journey we discussed the first maths problems, including a previously unsolved special case of a question that had been set by mistake in the second round of the national competition in 2015. This problem would keep us busy throughout the summer meeting and beyond, and was solved shortly afterwards through collaboration. After dinner, we ended the first day in a cosy atmosphere with board games.
On the second day, the participants gave presentations on their current research topics. The resulting technical discussions were continued on the subsequent hike to the Josefstal waterfalls, where there was also a lively exchange about career plans and prospects. As an additional team-building activity, some of us enjoyed the sunny weather and beautiful scenery on a short trip to nearby Schliersee. The rest of the day was spent in further intensive discussions of mathematical problems until late into the night.
After the last technical presentations on the third day, the summer meeting came to an end at lunchtime. All in all, there were many opportunities to exchange ideas and broaden our horizons.
Many thanks to all participants for a great weekend!
Text: Florian Grundbacher
Programme
Friday, 28.06.2024
Welcome remarks
Florian Grundbacher: Extremal Banach-Mazur Distances in Low Dimensions
Tim Reinhardt: Coexter Group Kaleidoscopes
Saturday, 29.06.2024
TopMath student meeting
Sharing career plans
Individual discussions
Chris Dong: Comparing Ways of Obtaining Candidate Orderings from Approval Ballots
Mia Runge: From Relating Symmetrizations to the Diameter-Width Ratio of Pseudo-Complete Convex Sets
Julia Meßthaler: Passage from Atomistic Systems to Nonlinear Elasticity Theory
Jamico Schade: Firefighter vs Burning Trees: A Graph Searching Variant
Sunday, 30.06.2024
Matthias Pfeifer: Different Frameworks for Working with Affine Toric Surfaces
Patrik Hammer: Developments in Hodge Theory
Christian Parsch: Exponential Convergence to Equilibrium for PDE Systems with Gradient Flow Structure
Conclusion and final remarks