Karel Devriendt
Hooke Fellow at Oxford University
✉ karel.devriendt<at>maths<dot>ox.ac.uk
✉ karel.devriendt<at>maths<dot>ox.ac.uk
About me
Hello! I am an applied mathematician working at the intersection of discrete mathematics, geometry and (linear) algebra with a strong interest in applications. Currently, I am a Hook Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.
Previously, I was a postdoc with Türkü Özlüm Çelik at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden (2025), a postdoc with Renaud Lambiotte at Oxford (2024-25), a postdoc with Bernd Sturmfels , Jürgen Jost and Raffaella Mulas at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (2022-24) and obtained my PhD at Oxford (2022).
Research
My research revolves around graphs and their applications. Over the last few years, I have focused on the concept of effective resistance and how it captures the geometry of graphs. Currently, I am interested in discrete curvature and discrete geometry and related questions on matroids, tropical geometry and algebraic statistics.
I have worked on applications such as power grid robustness, network epidemics and polarization in social networks.
News & Travels
New preprint "Gremban expansion for signed networks" on the arXiv, with Fernando Diaz-Diaz, Renaud Lambiotte
Paper "Graphs with nonnegative resistance curvature" was published in Annals of Combinatorics
Paper "Tropical toric MLE" was published in SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry, with Emma Boniface, Serkan Hosten
[get involved] We are editing a Special Issue on Discrete Curvature & Applications in JPhys: Complexity. Both theoretical and applied contributions are welcome!
[11-13/08] I was at Higher Order Opportunities & Challenges (RWTH Aachen)
[Sep 2025] I started as a Hooke Fellow at the Mathematical Insitute, Oxford.