Author: Eloísa Grifo

WICA proceedings: call for submissions

Sara Faridi, Elisa Gorla, Elisa Postinghel and Alexandra Seceleanu are editing a proceedings volume to appear in the Association for Women in Mathematics series published by Springer Nature. This proceedings volume will showcase the progress of the groups formed during the conferences WICA II (Trento, 2023) and WICA III (Oaxaca, 2024), but will also include papers developed outside of this conference series.

This is a last call for submissions to this volume. If you would like to submit a paper, please let the editors know of your intention as soon as possible. Alternatively, please follow the  link “Make a new submission” at this webpage. Please do not hesitate to contact the editors if you have any questions.

WICA IV seeking proposals

The workshop WICA IV – ICMS will be held July 20-24, 2026 at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) in Edinburgh, Scotland. All program participants should hold a PhD or equivalent degree by the time the workshop takes place.
The organizers are currently seeking proposals for research problems and also for topics for dialogue groups.  Proposals should be submitted via this link.  The deadline for proposals is July 1, 2025.  The form will ask for a PDF upload describing your proposed topic, following the description given below. A (likely proper) subset of the proposals will become part of the information available to those who apply to participate in the workshop.  (Applications to participate in the workshop will open in July 2025.)  Selection of topics will depend on interest from potential participants.
Workshop participants will participate in one of three types of working groups during the week.
  1. Traditional groups: There will be two research groups in the by-now-traditional WICA format, each with group leaders who have been recruited in advance of this announcement by workshop organizers.
  2. Proposed research groups: There will be three research groups whose group leaders are selected from among those who propose a research problem via the link above.  Proposals may be made by a single mathematician or by a team of two.  Proposers need not be senior mathematicians. They are expected to take the lead in getting the group started on the proposed problem during the workshop. However, because proposers will not necessarily be more senior than other group members, there is less of an expectation that they will serve as mentors within the group if the group chooses to continue the project beyond the week of the workshop.  Because (parts of) these problem proposals will be posted publicly, we understand that people may wish to keep the statements of their problems somewhat vague. The most important information is the general topic of the problem and the background that would be required for someone to work on it.
  3. Research dialogue groups: There will be two groups, each with four to six participants, who will work together to learn background material on topics on which they are not yet experts. The goals in these groups will be to build working relationships and lay the foundation for future research collaborations. There is no expectation that these groups will continue beyond the week of the workshop itself.
In order to propose a research problem, please prepare a brief summary (~1/4 page to a page) of the problem itself and, roughly, of the background one would need to have in order to engage meaningfully with the problem.  Please submit at most one research problem proposal.
In order to propose a dialogue topic, please choose a survey article, book chapter(s), research paper, or similar that you would like to study with others during the workshop week.  If there is a topic that you would like to learn and a small family of references you would be happy to learn from, including all of the options that would be appealing to you is perfectly fine.  If you want to propose more than one topic, please submit separate proposals.  Please submit at most three dialogue topic proposals.
Funding is available through ICMS and from a gift from Jane Street Capital to cover participants’ local expenses.  We are in the process of seeking sources of funding to defray the costs of participant travel; there is no guarantee that such funding will be obtainable.  Additionally, there may be a 150 GBP registration fee.
If you have questions about the workshop or about proposal topics, please email the workshop organizers, Susan Cooper, Elena Guardo, Sema Güntürkün, and Patricia Klein.

International REU in Commutative Algebra

The University or Nebraska-Lincoln and CIMAT are co-organizing an international REU in Commutative Algebra, to be held at CIMAT, in Guanajuato, Mexico, in Summer 2025.

American citizens and permanent US residents will be supported with funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), while Mexican citizens or residents in Mexico will be supported with funds from the Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias, y Tecnologías (CONAHCYT). Participants will receive a stipend for the duration of the program and assistance with housing and travel.

More information, including how to apply, can be found on the REU website.

Postdocs at MPI CBG Dresden

The mathematics groups at the MPI CBG Dresden are looking for postdocs interested in interdisciplinary work. The deadline is December 1st. More information can be found at

https://www.mpi-cbg.de/join-us/open-positions/job-offer/postdoctoral-researchers-m-f-d-in-mathematics-and-applications

Aida Maraj’s group Algebra in Data Analysis has a special interest in candidates with background in algebraic geometry, commutative algebra and combinatorics that are enthusiastic about interdisciplinary research with statistics and biology. She is happy to answer questions via email at maraj@mpi-cbg.de.

PhD position at Imperial College

Ben Briggs is advertising a PhD position at Imperial College London, to start in October 2025 (there may be some flexibility in this). Please pass this announcement onto any students you know who might be a good fit!

The successful candidate will, very broadly, work on topics in commutative algebra and representation theory using homological/homotopical methods. Slightly less broadly, the plan is to produce a thesis on the structure of Hochschild cohomology and its relation to other things like the cotangent complex, support varieties, K-theory, proxy-small objects, Koszul duality, etc.

To apply, first write to Ben Briggs (b.briggs@imperial.ac.uk) with a description of your own background and interests, and the names of some reference writers. After that, if we decide your background fits well, you should formally apply through the “My Imperial” system here.


In your application you should say that you are interested in working with Ben Briggs, and you should discuss in detail your background and your interest in the potential project. If you write to him then you can discuss potential thesis ideas in more detail, and this could help your application a lot.

Please apply soon: a shortlist will be made in early November and hold some interviews shortly after that. At present the funding is for home fees, but international applicants will have a chance to apply for a top up that will hopefully cover the full tuition amount.

Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship

The Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship is a unique three-year fellowship that offers early career scientists an interdisciplinary research experience at UC Berkeley. Nominations are open until September 12, 2024. Nomination Instructions are at can be found at

https://miller.berkeley.edu/fellowship

This three-year position with no teaching requirement (PhD between January 2023 and August 2025) comes with mentorship and lots of social activity (weekly lunches, etc) in an interdisciplinary community. There are about 10 positions/year across all sciences, and requires naming a mentor in the Berkeley faculty.

CARES seminar

The Commutative Algebra Regional Expository Seminar (or CARES for short) is a virtual seminar that will begin in September 2024. This is a continuation of a regional commutative algebra seminar. The organizers are graduate students Stephen Landsittel (Missouri) and Alexander Duncan (Arkansas). They hope for two speakers a month with a generous audience of graduate students interested in researching problems in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry.
In the past, the CARES seminar has been a popular means of sharing enthusiasm for newly-growing topics in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. In addition, speakers also obtain the invaluable experience of presenting what they have learned about to students outside of their institution. Often times, we also have a socialization event after the seminar such as virtual rooms where students can network and meet new people while beginning their journeys in academic research.
More information can be found on the CARES website.