WIAS PhD Group
Apes together strong.
To the website of the group of PhD students at the Weierstrass-Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics!
As a result of the recent elections, Michael Tsopanopoulos now shares the torch of PhD representation with Marwa. We warmly congratulate him and look forward to their work together! 🎉
Social event after work next Wednesday, July 30th. 🎳
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.
A mentoring event will take place after this next upcoming talk at 15:00. You will be able to meet potential mentors who can provide guidance for you during your stay at WIAS.
| Date | Contribution |
|---|---|
| 17.11.2025 At 14:30 in the library! | Jonas Köppl (LG 6) Spontaneous time-symmetry breaking in interacting particle systems Abstract: We study the long-time behaviour of interacting particle systems on the integer lattice with a focus on symmetries. In particular, we are interested in spontaneous symmetry breaking, i.e., situations where there are stationary measures that satisfy less symmetries than the transition rates themselves. Classical examples include the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model, where the global spin-flip symmetry is broken in dimensions and the translation-symmetry is broken in dimension . In this talk, we discuss the possibility of a spontaneous breaking of the time-symmetry, i.e., whether an interacting particle system with time-homogeneous rates can admit time-periodic behaviour. While this can easily be ruled out in finite volume, the situation is much more delicate in the thermodynamic limit. We provide a no-go theorem under the additional assumption of reversibility and exhibit examples of non-degenerate interacting particle systems which do indeed exhibit spontaneous time-symmetry breaking. The focus will be on general ideas and not on technical details to make it accessible to a general mathematical audience. |
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 in front of the entry to the 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.
