STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence Heidelberg

@structures-hd.bsky.social

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A unifying approach to emergent phenomena in the physical world, mathematics, and complex data. Website: https://structures.uni-heidelberg.de/ Blog: https://structures.uni-heidelberg.de/blog (Impressum: https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/de/impressum)

Reminder: 10th Schöntal Workshop: Dynamical Systems. 25th to 28th of August 2026, Schöntal Abbey. Are you an MSc, PhD student or early-career Postdoc? Join us for inspiring discussions and interdisciplinary exchange in the unique atmosphere of Schöntal Abbey. Please register by end of this week! Registration form: link in bio. Participation free of charge for members of the STRUCTURES YRC.
We are pleased to welcome Olivier Pierre-Louis (University of Lyon) to this week's Jour-Fixe for a talk entitled: “The Allen-Cahn equation with multiplicative oscillatory driving”. The talk will focus on the Allen-Cahn equation, a widely used model for systems in which domains form and grow over time. It will discuss how this behaviour changes under oscillatory multiplicative driving, which represents, for example, an oscillation of the temperature in an Ising system that may or may not cross the critical temperature. The main talk will be preceded by a pretalk, also by Olivier Pierre-Louis, at 13:00. Everyone interested is warmly invited to join. There will be coffee, tea & snacks before and after the event. You are more then welcome to meet and discuss up-to-date topics with participants or ask questions to the lecturer! For those unable to attend in person, online participation is available via Zoom: Meeting ID: 935 6549 3662 | Code: 928036
We are delighted to announce this year's YRC Schöntal Discussion Workshop on Dynamical Systems, which will take place from the 25th to the 28th of August at the quaint and charming Schöntal Abbey. The aim of the workshop is to provide an opportunity for early-career scientists to gather and discuss topics that go beyond the standard mathematics and physics curriculum, and to approach different subjects from their respective fields of research. The goal is to encourage interdisciplinary scientific exchange between the various areas of the STRUC­TURES Cluster. This year, the overarching topic of Dynamical Systems will be the protagonist. As a key concept in many physical, mathematical, computational and biological applications, we expect it to foster collaboration across different fields and spark conversations that may lead to innovative and creative ideas and applications.
Photo of Fred Hamprecht
Event picture
Don’t forget today’s STRUCTURES Jour Fixe on Large Language Models and their possible applications in physics! We are pleased to welcome Caroline Heneka (ITP, Heidelberg University) for her talk: “Large Language Models – are pretrained language correlations useful for physics?” The main talk will be preceded by a pretalk by Daniel Schiller. Everyone interested is warmly invited to join us, meet other participants and take part in the discussion!
Can AI in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs) inform physics and help us understand the Universe? We are pleased to welcome Caroline Heneka (ITP, Heidelberg University) for a talk entitled: “Large Language Models – are pretrained language correlations useful for physics?” The talk explores how LLMs can be used to analyze and generate 3D maps of the cosmological large-scale structure, with a particular focus on 21cm data of neutral hydrogen for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). As such, these new AI methods may also benefit fundamental physic research. The main talk will be preceded by a pretalk by Daniel Schiller at 13:00. Everyone interested is warmly invited to join. There will be coffee, tea & snacks before and after the event. You are welcome to meet and discuss up-to-date topics with participants or ask questions to the lecturer!
Photo of the event
What if a notoriously complicated physics problem could be solved with a simple geometric idea? Phase diagrams are everywhere in physics, materials science and geoscience. Yet the standard methods to compute them can be surprisingly cumbersome. In this STRUCTURES Jour Fixe, Cornelis Dullemond (ZAH, Heidelberg) will show a simple but mostly overlooked convex hull approach to compute these diagrams efficiently and elegantly. Join us this Friday to learn more. 5 June 2026, 13:30. Phil12 Large Lecture Hall + Online
STRUCTURES YRC members Manuel Klockow and Peter Lippmann presented their work “A Function-Centric Graph Neural Network Approach for Predicting Electron Densities” at the 14th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their study introduces a graph neural network-based method, which is currently the most accurate known ML approach for electron density prediction on highly competitive benchmarks. We are pleased to see research supported by STRUCTURES represented at ICLR, one of the leading international conferences in machine learning and representation learning. Congratulations to Manuel Klockow, Peter Lippmann, and all collaborators involved. The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) is one of the leading international conferences in artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on representation learning and deep learning. It brings together researchers from academia and industry to present cutting-edge work across machine learning, data science, and application areas such as computer vision, computational biology, natural language processing, robotics, and reinforcement learning.
Reminder: STRUCTURES Jour Fixe is today! Sebastian Stapelberg will share news and updates from the STRUCTURES Office. This is a great opportunity to catch up and stay informed! May 22, 13:30. Phil 12 gHS & online. Free coffee, tea & snacks. Everyone welcome!
STRUCTURES Jour Fixe this Friday! Sebastian Stapelberg will share news from the STRUCTURES Office and updates from the past months. May 22, 13:30. Phil 12 gHS & online. Free coffee, tea & snacks. Everyone welcome!
Promotional poster for the “STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence – YRC Funding Call, May 2026.” The image shows a globe with flight paths and location markers, symbolizing international research opportunities and travel funding. Below the globe are icons representing travel funds, books, online courses, and tablets. The background features the Heidelberg cityscape with a bridge and hills at sunset. At the bottom, a yellow “Apply Now!” button appears next to the application deadline: 17 May 2026.
The STRUCTURES Jour Fixe is finally back after the semester break! We are excited to welcome everyone again this Friday for a talk by Ullrich Köthe (IWR, Universität Heidelberg) on “EOFlows — a non-linear generalization of PCA” and a pretalk from Armand Roussellot. The main talk will introduce Entropy-Ordered Flows as a non-linear generalization of Principal Component Analysis, with a focus on interpretability in machine learning approaches and possible future applications in physics. Friday, May 08, 2026. Pretalk by Armand Rousselot at 13:00. Main talk at 13:30. Philosophenweg 12, gHS. Zoom: Meeting ID 935 6549 3662 | Code: 928036. Free coffee, tea & snacks in Room 106. Everyone interested is warmly invited to join us! We look forward to seeing many of you again and starting the Jour Fixe after the break together.
Wide-angle photo of a university lecture hall with tiered seating filled with students, looking down toward a professor standing at the front beside a desk and a projected slide. The slide discusses generative modeling and renormalization group flows. Large windows line the left wall, and a balcony with speakers runs above the classroom. A blue banner at the bottom of the image contains text about an exciting presentation by Prof. Jan Pawlowski at a STRUCTURES Jour Fixe event, with a clapping emoji.
YRC in Les Houches, France with the LISA School for Early-Career Scientists.
Photo of the event
This STRUCTURES Jour Fixe will be about quantum gravity! We welcome Astrid Eichhorn (Heidelberg University) for a talk on “Quantum gravity – from fundamental questions to observational probes.” When and where: Tomorrow 5 December at 13:30 in Philosophenweg 12 gHS.
Event Poster with date and venue: Friday November 21, 13:30pm, Philosophenweg 12 GHs and online
Illustrated social media poster announcing postdoctoral positions. Text reads: “Postdoc Positions in Computational Astrophysics & Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Formation. Group of Michela Mapelli at ZAH. Application open until December 03!” The background shows a person working on a laptop with icons of galaxies, gravitational wave graphs, and a black hole, against a dark blue starry backdrop.
Newsletter-Cover
The possible moves on a magic cube form what mathematicians call a group. A group is formed by a set of actions you can combine, reverse, and return to the starting position. Despite the cube’s complexity, all possible configurations can be reached by a combination of elementary moves. Groups also play a central role for understanding symmetries in nature. Learn more in the STRUCTURES Blog post by Valdo Tatitscheff.
STRUCTURES Jour Fixe #5 this Friday! July 25, 13:30 Philosophenweg 12 gHS Tim Laux (Uni HD): Geometric Flows in Physics, Math & Data Zoom: 935 6549 3662 | Code: 928036 Snacks in Room 106
Don’t miss this Friday’s STRUCTURES Jour Fixe! Tim Laux (U. Heidelberg) will speak on “Geometric Flows in Physics, Math, and Data.”
Reminder: STRUCTURES Jour Fixe Today! Join us today at 13:30 for Anja Randecker’s talk: “How does a random surface of large genus look like?”
STRUCTURES Jour Fixe continues this Friday with Anja Randecker (U. Heidelberg) talking about: “How does a random surface of large genus look like?”
Today’s the day! Henrik Beuther & Fabian Walter are joining us for today’s Jour Fixe: “H I across the Universe” — from nearby clouds to the early cosmos.
We are happy to announce this week's jour fixe!! Henrik Beuther & Fabian Walter will talk about “H1 across the Universe” — from nearby clouds to the early cosmos. When: July 11 - 13:30 PM Where: Philosophenweg 12 GHs