Jan Draisma

Professor of Mathematics

Contact
Publications
Programs
Talks
Teaching
Organisational
Recreational Maths
Links

News
Spring 2023: I'm organising the SMG Spring Meeting. Please attend!
Fall 2022: I'll be on sabbatical at the IAS as a participant in the Special Year on Dynamics, Additive Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry.

January 2022: I have succeeded Bernd Sturmfels as Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry.

Dec 2020: my former Ph.D. student Arthur Bik as won an SNF Postdoc.Mobility grant, with which he will spend a year at MPI MIS (Leipzig) and a year at Texas A&M (College Station). Congrats to Arthur!

Nov 2020: my Ph.D. student Alejandro Vargas won an SNF Early Postdoc.Mobility grant, with which he will spend time in Frankfurt and Nantes. Congrats to Alejandro!

Feb 2020: We have created a movie visualising parts of my joint paper with Alejandro Vargas on the gonality of metric graphs.

Feb 2020: Shreehari Bodas, a Bachelor's student from IIT Bombay, has successfully applied for a ThinkSwiss 2020 Research Scholarship to visit my group for two months this summer---unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, his visit did not take place.

Apr 2019: The current, online version of the programme for SIAM AG 19 is online.

Mar 2019: My paper on topological Noetherianity of polynomial functors was accepted for publication in the Journal of the AMS.

July 2018: My former student Rob Eggermont has won a Veni grant.

June 2018: The website for MEGA 2019 is up and running.

Apr 2018: The website for SIAM AG 19 is up and running.

Dec 2017: My student Arthur Bik won the DIAMANT prize for best Ph.D. talk at the DIAMANT symposium; see this picture.

Nov 2017: MEGA (Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry) now has a permanent website collecting information about past and future MEGAs!

May 2017: Christandl, Jensen, and Zuiddam give very simple and elegant examples of strict submultiplicativity of tensor rank under the tensor product in this preprint!

Jan 2017: Paul Breiding has succeeded at evaluating our formula for the average ED degree of the cone over Veronese embeddings. See Paul's impressive preprint and our paper for the formula.

Jan 2017: Andries Brouwer and Dan Christensen refuted the Gale-Neyman conjecture that in chomp on the n-dimensional hypercube {0,1}^n with poisoned block at the origin, the all-one vector is a winning first move. They show this is not true for n=7. See this page.

Aug 2016: I have moved to the Bern math institute, succeeding Christine Riedtmann.

Mar 2016: Anna Seigal wrote a blog about the pictures on the cover of our new SIAM journal.

Feb 2016: My Vici proposal entitled Stabilisation in Algebra and Geometry was successful!

Feb 2016: The website for the journal is up, and paper submission will open on 23 March.

Jan 2016: Here is the cover art for the new SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry---the website will be up soon!


Dec 2015: Our proposal for a new SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry was approved by SIAM. We aim to attract the best papers in this broad area. Submission will open soon, but please contact me if you have fantastic work that could fit!

June 2015: the Mittag-Leffler proposal by Anders Jensen, Hannah Markwig, Benjamin Nill, and myself for a semester on Tropical geometry, amoebas, and polytopes was accepted for Spring 2018!

May 2015: Rob Eggermont got his Ph.D. with the distinction cum laude; congratulations! See this news item.

April 2015: My article on Plücker varieties with Rob Eggermont was accepted by Crelle's journal.

April 2015: I have joined the editorial boards of Linear and Multilinear Algebra, Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde and, last year, of Experimental Mathematics. Where appropriate, please consider submitting your work to one of these journals.

March 2015: I wrote a SIAM News article loosely based on lectures by Peter Bürgisser and others during the Simons Institute semester on Algorithms and Complexity in Algebraic Geometry.

January 2015: I was appointed parttime full professor at the VU Amsterdam; see this news item.

October 2014: Rekha Thomas wrote a beautiful article for SIAM News on the Euclidean distance degree.

Fall 2014: The MEGA 2015 website is in place, and submission of papers, extended abstracts, computations, and posters is open!

October 2014: both my last-year's Master students have started Ph.D.'s: Jasmijn Baaijens in the CWI life sciences group, under the supervision of Alexander Schönhuth; and Guus Bollen in Discrete Maths here at TU/e, under the supervision of Hans Cuypers, Rudi Pendavingh, and myself. The best of luck to both!

September 2014: The conference website for the SIAM Conference on Applied Algebraic Geometry is up and running. Check it out, and consider organising a minisymposium! The conference has also been accepted as a ICIAM 2015 satellite.

July 2014: my Department nominated me for a TU/e Education Award, as their candidate in the category Best Master's Program Lecturer.

Spring 2014: three members of the SIAM (AG)^2 were elected SIAM fellows: Jean Lasserre, Peter Olver, and Bernd Sturmfels. Congratulations!

24 February 2014: I wrote a guest post on Rota's basis conjecture for The Matroid Union.

9 January 2014: I won the GEWIS teaching award 2013/2014 for Mathematics. Needless to say, I'm very, very proud of this!

December 2013: I was elected Chair of the SIAM activity group on Algebraic Geometry. This group brings together researchers who use algebraic geometry in industrial and applied mathematics. If you are an algebraic geometer interested in applications, or if you have a maths/statistics/engineering/CS/... problem that you think might benefit from algebraic techniques, please check out this activity group (or contact me). It's this interplay that makes the group such a success!

24 October 2013: my paper with Eggermont on the existence of poly-time membership tests for a wide class of phylogenetic models has just been accepted for J. Eur. Math. Soc.

1 May 2013: my paper with Kuhnt and Zwiernik on groups acting on Gaussian graphical models has just been accepted for Annals of Statistics.

Spring 2013: Robert Krone from GeorgiaTech is visiting for three months. Together with Anton Leykin and Rob Eggermont we aim to prove finiteness-up-to-symmetry results for certain infinite-dimensional toric varieties.

15 October 2012: the website of the CIME/CIRM course Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry, taking place from 10-15 June 2013 in Levico Terme, is up. Check it out!

1 September 2012: Emil Horobeţ from Babes-Bolyai university joins the group on the project Tensors of Bounded Rank.

23 January 2012: Tensors of Bounded Rank, an NWO free competition Ph.D. project proposal together with Monique Laurent and Siep Weiland has been awarded funding!

23 January 2012: Piotr Zwiernik is starting a Post-doc in the Vidi project.

1 September 2011: Rob Eggermont started his Ph.D. in the Vidi project.

2 March 2011: a manuscript with Johan P. de Jong on his Bachelor's project has been accepted for publication in the EMS Newsletter. See this page.

6 October 2010: A Vidi grant! See this page or this page or this page.


































Teaching

Below are my current and previous teaching activities since Fall 2002.

Courses/Seminars

Varieties and algebraic groups, a Master's/Bachelor's course in Bern, Spring 2020.

Mathematics for data science, a Bachelor's course in Bern, Spring 2020, with Christiane Tretter and Thomas Wihler.

Kombinatorik, Graphen und Spiele, a Bachelor's course in Bern, Spring 2020, with Johanna Ziegel and Ilya Molchanov.

Algebra, a Bachelor's course in Bern, Fall 2019.

Mathematik für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, a Bachelor's service course in Bern, Fall 2019.

Algorithms in algebra, a Bachelor's course in Bern, Spring 2019.

Mathematik II für Naturwissenschaften, a Bachelor's course in Bern, Spring 2019.

Tensors: geometry and applications, a Master's seminar in Bern, Fall 2018 (title borrowed from Landsberg's book, from which we reviewed some of the basic concepts before students presented papers from the recent literature).

Mathematik für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, a Bachelor's service course in Bern, Fall 2018.

Representation Theory of Finite Groups, Bern, Spring 2018.

Gruppen und Körper, a Bachelor's Maths course in Bern, Fall 2017.

Mathematik für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, a Bachelor's service course in Bern, Fall 2017.

Varieties and algebraic groups, a Master's course in Bern, Spring 2017.

Mathematik II für Naturwissenschaften, a Bachelor's course in Bern, Spring 2017.

Applied algebraic geometry, a course for the Swiss Doctoral Program in Mathematics, Fall 2016 in Bern.

Algebraic topology, a Master's course in Bern, Fall 2016.

Multilinear algebra and applications, a first-year Master's course, Fall 2015; here's the rudimentary lecture notes.

Tropical Geometry, a Master's course at VU Amsterdam, Fall 2015.

Algorithmic Algebra and Number Theory, a third-year Bachelor's course, Fall 2015. Together with Benne de Weger. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Multilinear algebra and applications, a first-year Master's course (in English), Fall 2015. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Commutative algebra, a national Mastermath course, together with Rob de Jeu, Spring 2015.

Algebra and Geometry, a first-year Master's course, Spring 2015. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Algorithmic Algebra and Number Theory, a third-year Bachelor's course, Fall 2014. Together with Benne de Weger. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Linear and Bilinear Algebra (2WF04), a first-year Master's course (in English), Fall 2014. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Discrete Wiskunde 2, a third-year Bachelor's course, Spring 2014. Together with Benne de Weger. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Linear and Bilinear Algebra (2WF04), a first-year Master's course (in English), Fall 2013. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Discrete Wiskunde 2, a third-year Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2013. Together with Benne de Weger.

Linear and Bilinear Algebra (2WF04), a first-year Master's course (in English), Fall 2012. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Algebra 2 (2WF10), a second-year Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Fall 2012. Study guide, lecture notes, etc. to be found at Oase.

Discrete Wiskunde 2, a third-year Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2012. Together with Benne de Weger.

Lineaire Algebra, a Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2012. Together with Aart Blokhuis.

Linear and Bilinear Algebra, a first-year Master's course in Eindhoven, Fall 2011.

Lineaire Algebra, a Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2011. Together with Aart Blokhuis.

Discrete Wiskunde 2, a third-year Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2011. Together with Benne de Weger.

Linear and Bilinear Algebra, a first-year Master's course in Eindhoven, Autumn 2010.

Discrete Mathematics, a third-year Bachelor's course in Eindhoven, Spring 2010. Together with Benne de Weger.

Lineaire Algebra, a Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2010. Together with Aart Blokhuis.

Invariant Theory with Applications, a Master's course in Mastermath with Dion Gijswijt and Bart Frenk, Fall 2009.

Lineaire Afbeeldingen, a Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2009.

Discrete Mathematics, a third-year Bachelor's course in Eindhoven, Spring 2009. Together with Benne de Weger.

Lineaire Afbeeldingen, a Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2008.

Discrete Mathematics, a third-year Bachelor's course in Eindhoven, Spring 2008. Together with Benne de Weger.

Lineaire Afbeeldingen, a Bachelor's course (in Dutch), Spring 2007.

Discrete Structures, a Master's course for Mastermath, Spring 2007. Together with Aart Blokhuis and Hans Cuypers.

Discrete Mathematics, a third-year Bachelor's course in Eindhoven, Autumn 2006. Together with Benne de Weger.

Transformation groups, a Master's seminar at Basel, Winter 2004/2005.

Linear algebraic groups, a Master's course at Basel, Winter 2004/2005.

Vorkurs Mathematik for the new students of the Phil. II-department of the University of Basel, September 2004.

Vorkurs Mathematik for the new students of the Phil. II-department of the University of Basel, 6-10 October 2003

Proseminar, a second-year seminar for maths students, Basel, Winter 2002/2003, with Hanspeter Kraft.

Exercise classes

Einfürung in die Numerik, a first-year course by Marcus Grote, Basel, Summer 2004, with Anna Schneebeli.

Algebra, a second/third-year course by David Masse course, Basel, Winter 2003/2004, with Vincent Bosser.

Topologie, a second/third-year course by Hanspeter Kraft, Basel, Summer 2003.