US Junior Oberwolfach Fellows

Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, Oberwolfach

Investigators

Abstract

This 5-year award supports annually 100 “US Junior Oberwolfach Fellows”, outstanding graduate students and postdocs from US universities and institutes with at most 10 years experience after their PhD, in their participation in week-long activities at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (MFO). The MFO is a leading international mathematical research center in Germany with annually nearly 3,000 international scientific visitors who are leading experts in a field of research in mathematics and its applications. Participation of junior scientists from the United States in these activities will allow them to benefit at an early stage of their career from opportunities to meet and network with top senior scientists from all over the world. They can present their own results, either in talks or in poster sessions, can learn new methods and results from the other participants and can take part in the numerous and scientifically very profitable public and private discussions. As the MFO is solely devoted to research, workshop participation enables interactions during the whole week, fostering new approaches and fast progress on a broad range of research topics in mathematics and adjacent disciplines in science and technology. The MFO runs its week-long scientific activities in 4 central programs: The Oberwolfach Workshops, the Mini-Workshops, the Arbeitsgemeinschaften, and the Oberwolfach Seminars. The main scientific program is the Oberwolfach Workshop program which consists of about 40 research workshops per year, each with about 50 participants and organized by internationally leading experts. The Mini-Workshop program offers 12 mini-workshops per year, each with about 15 participants, and allows more focused meetings than the workshops. The purpose of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (“Study Group”, 3 times per year) for junior as well as for senior researchers is to learn about a new active topic outside their current area of research by giving a lecture on it. The 6 Oberwolfach Seminars are schools organised by leading experts in the field and address PhD students and postdocs from all over the world. The aim is to introduce 25 participants to a particularly recent development. The support will result in an impressive increase of participation of early career researchers from the United States. Of the total proportion of about 22% of visitors coming from the United States, about 3% of all guest researchers are visiting the MFO with an US Junior Oberwolfach Fellowship. Scientific quality is assured by careful selection of programs through an international scientific committee and a scientific advisory board. Great care is taken to ensure equity, diversity and inclusion such that mathematicians of any national origin, minority group, gender, religion, diet/food requirements, disability status and age can apply and are regularly invited to Oberwolfach. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.