Get-together and career advice for young mathematicians

Elisa is a full professor at the Institute of Analysis and Scientific Computing at TU Vienna.

Her research comprises analysis of partial differential equations, calculus of variations, and their applications to problems in materials science, biology, and image reconstruction.

Elisa did her PhD at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, before moving to the USA for her first Post-Doc at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and afterwards to the University of Vienna. 

In 2020, she received a START Prize of the FWF for the project "Tunable materials: geometry, nonlocality, chirality" and became a laureate of the Richard von Mises Prize from GAMM.

Elisa looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• How to get the best out of conferences.

• How much time to dedicate to non-research activities.

• Career and life balance.

Sylvia is a full professor of applied statistics and econometrics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. 

Her work has contributed to research in Bayesian modeling and Markov chain Monte Carlo inference for a broad range of models.

Sylvia holds a PhD from the TU Vienna, where she also did her first Post-Doc. In 1996 she completed her habilitation in statistics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

In 2007, she received a DeGroot Prize and was elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She is also a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Science.

Furthermore, Sylvia has been active in the steering committee of the Austrian Association of Women in Mathematics since its founding.

Sylvia looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• How to decide where to get involved and when to say no? 

• How much time should I invest into non-research activities? (organization in associations like A^2WiM, editoring, reviewing, conference organization, teaching...) 

• Which and how many talk invitations to accept and how to decide when it is just too much? 

Vera is an associate professor at University of Vienna. 

Her main research focuses on set theory, mathematical logic, and infinitary combinatorics. 

Vera obtained her PhD degree in mathematical logic from York University, Canada and, in 2016, her habilitation from the University of Vienna. She also holds an Excellence of Teaching Award from York University.

In 2017, she received the START Prize of FWF for her project "Infinite combinatorics and definability", and in 2018 she was awarded the Prize of the Austrian Mathematical Society. 

Vera looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• Importance of grants - when to apply for your first grant? 

• Importance of overseas experience

• How much time and effort should I invest into student guidance (apart from teaching duty, e.g. advising a Bachelor's thesis, Master's thesis, etc)? 

Markus is a project leader at the University of Vienna.

His main research interests include time-frequency analysis, Gabor systems and lattice problems.

Markus received the Doc Award, granted by the City of Vienna and the University of Vienna, for one of the 12 most outstanding doctoral theses. Later, he did his first Post-Doc at NTNU Trondheim.

After coming back to Vienna, he was awarded with two FWF grants: a Stand-alone project and a 1000-ideas Program.  Markus was also a stand-in professor at RWTH Aachen University. Very recently, he obtained his habilitation from the University of Vienna.

Markus looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• Career vs. lifestyle: family and sacrifices.

• Importance of grants: when to apply for the first grant and which one.

• How to build up a network and become independent.

Esther is a mathematician working as a Senior Consultant at d-fine in Vienna in Austria.

She is interested in tackling difficult real-world problems in modern markets. Before, her research interests included modelling of multi-species processes in biology, physics, and chemistry by using partial differential equations and by bridging PDE-techniques with probabilistic methods. 

Esther did her PhD at TU Vienna, where she also worked as a postdoctoral researcher. 

In 2019, she received the Best Paper Award from the Faculty of Mathematics and Geoinformation, TU Wien, Austria.

Esther looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• Differences between jobs in academia and industry.

• How to get the best out of workshops and conferences?

• How should I organize my work?

Eleonore is a professor at the University of Graz and the University of Leeds.

Her research interests are commutative algebra, (noncommutative) algebraic geometry, representation theory, singularity theory, homological algebra and cluster algebras.

Eleonore obtained her PhD degree from the University of Vienna, with distinction Promotio sub auspiciis Praesidentis rei publicae. She also did several years of Post-doctoral research abroad, including the University of Toronto, Canada, and the University of Michigan, USA, and the University of Leeds, UK.

During her period at Leeds, she was a recipient of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship and today she is a Co-I on EPSRC Programme grant.

Eleonore looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• Importance of grants - when to apply for your first grant?

• How much time should I invest into non-research activities? (organization in associations like A^2WiM, editoring, reviewing, conference organization, teaching...) 

• How to cope with mental health challenges (rejections, imposter syndrome, burn-out, etc)?

Karin is a full professor at the University of Innsbruck.

Her main research interests are sparse approximation and dictionary learning as well as their applications in signal processing.

Karin obtained her PhD degree in computer, communication and information sciences from EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. Following two maternity leaves and a Postdoc stay at RICAM Linz she was a Schroedinger fellow at the University of Sassari, Italy.

In 2014, she was awarded a START Prize of FWF for her project "Optimisation Principles, Models & Algorithms for Dictionary Learning", and in 2021, she received the Prize of the Austrian Mathematical Society. 

Karin looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• Habilitation – important or not?

• How was your interview experience?

• How to cope with mental health challenges (rejections, imposter syndrome, burn-out, etc)?

• How do I work towards independence?

Luca is a professor for Mathematical Methods in Medicine and Life Sciences at Johannes Kepler University Linz and a group leader at the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics. 

His work is interdisciplinary, encompassing biomedical modeling and simulation, multiscale glioma modeling, infectious diseases and ecology but also numerical approximation of PDEs.

Since obtaining his PhD at the University of Trento in Italy, he was a Marie Curie Industry Fellow, a Postdoc and Fellow of the Centre for Disease Ecology in Atlanta, as well as a senior researcher and Research Line Leader at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics  in Bilbao.

Luca looks forward to discussing the following topics with you:

• How inter-disciplinary should I be?

• Career vs lifestyle: how much do I need to sacrifice for my career?

• Importance of overseas experience