The TopMath Supervisory Award
The TopMath Supervisory Award was established in 2018, together with the ISAM Supervisory Award and the TUM Supervisory Award of the Graduate Council and the Graduate School.
The common goal of the awards is to honour TUM members who distinguish themselves through excellent doctoral supervision, while at the same time raising awareness of the criteria for good supervision. The latter include, for example, the availability of supervisors to their doctoral candidates and support in developing a publication strategy and research questions.
For the supervision of TopMath doctoral candidates who start working on their dissertation during their Master's degree, other criteria are also essential: for example, early support for these very young researchers in the development of their mathematical personality. The TopMath Supervisory Award is awarded every two years and comes with a cash prize of €500, which the winner can use to benefit their doctoral candidates.
Award for Professor Kühn
The winner of the TopMath Supervisory Award 2024 is Prof. Christian Kühn. He holds the Chair of Multiscale and Stochastic Dynamics and conducts research in the areas of dynamical systems, stochastic analysis, numerical analysis and, in particular, their interfaces and applications to problems in the natural sciences and engineering.
He is being honoured in particular for his dedication to his doctoral candidates and his exceptionally agile and adaptable style of supervision.
Particularly noteworthy aspects of support
Professor Kühn is extremely reliable and easy to get in touch with. Manuscripts and preprints are usually reviewed and annotated within a few days, in some cases within hours. Even during conferences and research trips, he is always available for quick meetings and feedback.
It is clear from his supervisory style that he cares deeply about the well-being of his doctoral candidates. He is very responsive to individual needs and is very flexible in his approach, depending on the situation of each student. He creates an informal yet structured and productive atmosphere in his group, which also encourages collaboration between doctoral candidates and postdocs.
He has an excellent network in the international research community and regularly uses these contacts to support his doctoral candidates by initiating research stays and projects. This networking goes hand in hand with an almost inexhaustible, encyclopaedic knowledge of the literature, both in terms of teaching and basic principles as well as current research.
“The personal balance must be right”
When asked which aspects he attaches particular importance to when mentoring young scientists, Prof. Kühn answers:
Mentoring young researchers at the doctoral and post-doctoral levels is an essential part of being a professor. In particular, the transition from a Master's thesis to a doctoral topic is very complex, as the questions are now set on a much longer time scale for the first time. So you need safe structures, clear help, practical tips and the opportunity to get feedback at any time, which is what I try to provide as part of the mentoring process. Probably an even greater challenge is to keep an eye on the individual personality and strengths of the doctoral candidate as much as possible. The personal balance has to be right between reading, learning, creative phases, new impressions and the precise written recording of new results. Achieving this balance requires a lot of motivation, a positive att itude and enthusiasm for science, and this is what I try to model as a mentor.
The doctoral candidates of TopMath congratulate the winner!
Winners of the TopMath Supervisory Award
2024: Prof. Dr. Christian Kühn, Professor für Mehrskaligkeit und stochastische Dynamik
2022: Prof. Dr. Felix Brandt, Professor for Algorithmic Game Theory
2020: Prof. Dr. Oliver Junge, Professor for Numerics of Complex Systems
2018: Prof. Dr. Boris Vexler, Professor for Optimal Control