Tenure track and visiting positions at Union College

[Note: Union College houses among others Ellen Gasparovic, who does TDA]

On behalf of the Department of Mathematics at Union College, I am writing to make you aware of openings for a tenure-track position and for two visiting positions in our department starting in September 2020. The details are available at https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-195-14758.

The mathematics department and Union College value student and workforce diversity.  We are committed to continue developing as a community of diverse populations and cultures including, but not limited to, those based on race, religion, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin and veteran status. As such, we are always looking to diversify our applicant pool so that it is as broad as possible.  Toward this end, we would be grateful if you could let those you know who are on the job market know about our positions.

I would also like to provide you (and prospective applicants) with some additional information about our college and department.  Union is a liberal arts college with engineering located in Schenectady, NY, part of the Capital District of New York State.  Union is an historic college, having been founded in 1795 as the first non-denominational college in the U.S. Our mission is to develop in our students the analytic and reflective abilities needed to become engaged, innovative, and ethical contributors to an increasingly diverse, global, and technologically complex society. This past year, the College celebrated the inauguration of our 19th president, David Harris, who is challenging us to learn to be more comfortable with being uncomfortable in the service of personal and communal growth and wisdom.  We are part of a metropolitan area of more than a million people with proximity to major cities and outdoor recreation; specifically, we are convenient to Boston, Montreal, and New York City (3-hour drive to each plus frequent Amtrak service to NYC) as well as the Adirondack Park and Vermont.

Faculty members at Union are focused both on teaching undergraduates and on research. Our department, with twelve tenure-track faculty lines, has a welcoming, supportive, and collegial environment.

Again, we would be grateful if you could let those you know who are on the job market know about our positions (and please feel free to forward this email to them).

Best wishes,

Christina Tønnesen-Friedman

Math Department and Hiring Committee Chair

PhD Student – Topology and Robotic manipulation

Júlia Borràs Sol writes:

We are searching for a PhD student to work on topics related to computational topology, geometry, and robotics. In particular, we are part of an ERC European project (https://clothilde.iri.upc.edu/) focused on defining the mathematical fundaments of cloth manipulation using robots. The proposed PhD Thesis would work on exploring topological indexes, like for instance, the Gauss Linking Integral that measures the level of writhe between two curves in the space. This has been used as a guide for path planning in robotics, and we want to extend its application to bi-manual manipulation in general, and cloth manipulation if possible.

IRI is a robotics institute in Barcelona with a team of international researchers on robotics, we are part of a dynamic group (https://www.iri.upc.edu/research/perception) that offers many further opportunities, and nice applications for our theoretical studies.

Candidates must be doing or have a master’s degree. Please, contact us urgently if interested.

Thesis title: “Topological measures to plan flexible objects bimanual robotic manipulation”
Advisors: Júlia Borràs and Maria Alberich
Reference: MDM-2016-0656-19-1
Related project: MdM: Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu
More info: https://www.iri.upc.edu/jobs/77
Contact: [email protected][email protected]

PhD Position: TDA and Computational Biology

With the framework of the International Training Network CANCERPREV, Kathryn Hess will supervise a PhD student to work on a project concerning “Detection of cyclic changes in gene expression by topological data analysis”.   The student will most probably be affiliated with the new PhD program in computational biology at EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland).

Interested potential candidates are encouraged to contact Kathryn Hess for more information.  The application deadline is December 15.  Further information about how to apply can be found here. 

PhD position in TDA/computational biology at EPFL

With the framework of the International Training Network CANCERPREV, I will supervise a PhD student to work on a project concerning “Detection of cyclic changes in gene expression by topological data analysis”. The student will most probably be affiliated with our new PhD program in computational biology.

Interested potential candidates are encouraged to contact me for more information. The application deadline is December 15. Further information about how to apply can be found here.

Special Issue on TDA In MDPI:Algorithms

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit your latest research in the area of applied and computational topology to this Special Issue, “Topological Data Analysis”. We are looking for new and innovative approaches to use methods from algebraic topology in data analysis, statistics, and machine learning. This Special Issue is intended to feature a balance between theoretical developments in topological data analysis and practical applications. Topics include but are not limited to persistence theory, multidimensional persistence, design of filtered simplicial complexes from data, summaries of persistence modules, design of new algorithms to efficiently use topological insights in data science applications, as well as a broad spectrum of applications of topological methods in robotics, biology, medicine, and social sciences. 

For more details, see the website https://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms/special_issues/Topological_Data_Analysis

Nello Blaser
Guest Editor

Giotto-learn, an open-source library for topological machine learning in Python

L2F – Learn to Forecast, the Laboratory for Topology and Neuroscience (EPFL, Switzerland) and the Institute of Reconfigurable and Embedded Systems (heig-vd, Switzerland) are excited to announce Giotto, an open-source project aimed at integrating topological data analysis and machine learning at a fundamental level.

Giotto’s objective is to bring topological data analysis closer to the broader data science community, and to gather contributions from experts in the field.

Our first product is the Python library giotto-learn, released on 21 October 2019 under the Apache 2.0 license. We put an emphasis on making giotto-learn intuitive, user-friendly, and performant. It offers a convenient API and is fully compatible with the most used all-purpose machine learning library in the world, scikit-learn.

giotto-learn inherits the modularity and flexibility of the scikit-learn framework and extends the latter’s reach to include steps inspired by topological data analysis and by the theory of dynamical systems. The ability to create complex pipelines and to use scikit-learn’s model selection and hyperparameter searches, allows for topology-informed machine learning to be performed at larger scales and in the style used in modern data science. Our collaboration’s first paper shows how this allows for an extensive topological analysis of the MNIST digits dataset, including successful classification using topological features only!

While the API is written in Python, the package incorporates compiled C++ code for efficiency. In v0.1.0, Ripser (newly bound to our Python code) is used for fast computation of Vietoris-Rips persistence, and an optimised version of Hera is used for bottleneck and Wasserstein distances.

We look forward to your comments, suggestions and merge requests! Giotto’s core team is happy to help and can be reached at [email protected].

Postdoc in Applied TDA at INRIA Saclay

In the setting of a collaboration with the “Institut Français du Pétrole et des Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN)” ( https://www.ifpenergiesnouvelles.com/ ),  the DataShape team at Inria ( https://team.inria.fr/datashape/ )  invites applications for a 3-years researcher position in Topological Data Analysis (TDA).

The research  activities will be mainly driven by concrete practical data science problems. The objectives will focus on the development of new TDA methods and tools, their effective use on problems of interest for IFPEN, and their theoretical analysis.  

We seek outstanding candidates with  research skills in TDA and strong interest for real applications. Good programming skills and some knowledge and experience in statistics and machine learning will be a plus.   

Interested candidates should contact Frédéric Chazal and Marc Glisse by email ( [email protected]  / [email protected] ) with a detailed CV.      

6th CIMAT Winter School and Workshop in Geometric and Topological Data Analysis

We are pleased to announce the 6th Winter School and Workshop on Geometric and Topological Data Analysis, which will take place at CIMAT Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico, from the 20th-24th of January, 2020.

The program of the event will include the three mini-courses:

Geometric Complexes in Applied Topology
Henry Adams, Colorado State University

Random Cubical Complexes
Erika Roldán, Ohio State University

Algebraic Tools in Multiparameter Persistent Homology
Hal Schenck, Iowa State University

Additionally, there will be research talks on related topics and a poster session. There is still space for contributed talks. If you are interested in giving a talk, please indicate this on the registration form, and send your titles and abstracts to:

Rosy Davalos, [email protected]

Antonio Rieser, [email protected]

Limited financial support is available for local expenses for students and early-career researchers.Important dates:

Deadline for titles and abstracts: November 15th, 2019
Deadline for financial support (for students): November 4th, 2019
For registration and more information, please consult the website:

http://atd2020.eventos.cimat.mx
Organizing committee:

Abraham Martín del Campo
Antonio Rieser
Carlos Vargas Obieta
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Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas
Jalisco s/n
Col. Valenciana
CP 36023 Guanajuato, GTO
Mexico