EXC 2046/1: Algebraic and Arithmetic Geometry

Berlin is a leading place for application-oriented mathematics, distinguished in particular by the success story of the Research Centre MATHEON with its focus on modelling, simulation, and optimization (MSO) for key technologies. Building on this strength, the Berlin Mathematics Research Centre MATH+ sets out to advance mathematics and its interdisciplinary power, in order to achieve progress on grand challenges in a wide variety of application fields. This will benefit not only industry and society, in key issues such as sustainable energy supply, individualized medicine, and the analysis of social processes, but also mathematics itself. The growing complexity of technology and society requires that application-oriented mathematics be developed to a new level. Facing this challenge, MATH+ will augment the technology-driven MSO approach by developing new mathematical perspectives on the vast amounts of data that are becoming available. This will yield innovative approaches to established MATHEON application fields such as life sciences and materials sciences, as well as to new ones such as social sciences and the humanities. Conversely, novel application fields pose a multitude of new challenges to mathematical abstraction, methods, and problem solving, thereby involving and driving diverse and sometimes unexpected areas of mathematics. With its agenda, MATH+ will contribute in an essential way to the development of one of the great potentials of mathematics: to uncover hidden principles behind complex systems, thus effectively enabling deeper insights, improved predictions, and information-based decisions. Integral to the MATH+ agenda will be the research training and education of talented young researchers on their paths to careers both inside and outside academia, and the transfer of knowledge to industry and to society at large. To achieve these ambitious goals, MATH+ will combine and enrich the two successful excellence projects, MATHEON and the Berlin Mathematical School (BMS), within a new comprehensive and dynamic research centre. A wealth of synergies both in research and teaching will be realized in the merger. Novel structures, such as the “Topic Development Lab” will ensure a dynamic evolution of the interdisciplinary MATH+ research agenda and team. The education agenda of the BMS+, the graduate school of MATH+, will build on and enhance the international success of the BMS with its broad scientific basis and its proven framework for mentoring, gender advancement, and diversity.