MATH+ funds the positions for heads of independent junior research groups (JRG) in application-driven basic mathematical research in order to support excellent young researchers who already have some years of postdoc experience. They will be given a head start in building their own research profile and group within the supportive environment of the large Cluster of Excellence MATH+. JRG leaders receive funds to hire a doctoral researcher (PhD candidate) to start their own group. 

In October 2023, two new MATH+ Junior Resesarch Group Leaders (JRGL) for”Mathematics of Data Science” and “Optimization under Uncertainty” took up their positions at Technische Universität Berlin (TU). MATH+ welcomes Tim Nikolas Jahn and Franziska Eberle to the math community in Berlin.

Tim Nikolas Jahn, Junior Research Group Leader (JRGL) for “Mathematics of Data Science”:

Tim Jahn‘s research interests lie in the interface of numerics and statistics, focusing on applications in data science, machine learning, and imaging. He investigates adaptive techniques for high-dimensional inverse problems, dimension reduction for untrained neural networks, and stochastic optimization methods. Hereby, a particular focus is on the development of discretization-adaptive regularization, a new type of multiparametric regularization techniques.

On his new JRGL position, he commented: “MATH+, with its generous support and the strong faculty in numerical mathematics and statistics, offers the ideal environment to start my junior research group. In Berlin, I hope that I can further develop my methods in order to construct solution algorithms for problems with high practical relevance.”

Tim Jahn studied physics (B.Sc.) and mathematics (M.Sc.) at Goethe Universität Frankfurt, where he received his PhD with his dissertation on “Regularizing linear inverse problems under unknown non-Gaussian noise” in 2021. Afterwards, he held the Hausdorff Postdoc position at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn, also a mathematical Cluster of Excellence, until 2023.

Franziska Eberle, Junior Research Group Leader (JRGL) for “Optimization under Uncertainty”:

Franziska Eberle’s research interests lie in combinatorial optimization under uncertainty, mainly focusing on online and stochastic ways to model uncertainty in the input parameters. In her research, she investigates optimization problems with only partially known input parameters and designs and analyzes algorithms with provable performance guarantees for solving them.

When asked about her plans for the new position at TU Berlin, she said: “With my junior research group, I want to expand our knowledge of the solvability of online and/or stochastic counterparts of combinatorial optimization problems from the areas of scheduling, packing, probing, and network design; maybe finally finding an answer to a notoriously hard question that I already considered in my master’s thesis. I am fascinated by the fact that uncertainty adds another dimension to combinatorial optimization problems. Oftentimes, this requires a completely different approach for designing and analyzing algorithms to solve these problems compared to their deterministic counter parts.”

Franziska Eberle studied mathematics (B.Sc.) and Mathematics of Operation Research (M.Sc.) at Technische Universität München (TUM).  She then moved for her doctoral studies to Bremen where she obtained her PhD from the “Department of Mathematics and Computer Science” at Universität Bremen (Germany) with a thesis on “Scheduling and Packing Under Uncertainty“in 2020. After her postdoctoral research in Bremen, she held a position as Research Officer at the Department of Mathematics of the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK) from 2021 to 2023.

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MATH+ funds the positions for heads of independent junior research groups (JRG) in application-driven basic mathematical research in order to support excellent young researchers who already have some years of postdoc experience. They will be given a head start in building their own research profile and group within the supportive environment of the large Cluster of Excellence. JRG leaders receive funds to hire a doctoral researcher (PhD candidate) to start their own group.

More information on all current MATH+ funded Independent Junior Research Group Leaders