From left: Obongi Emmanuel from Uganda (ICTP Diploma Student); Tolibjon Ismoilov from Uzbekistan (ICTP/SISSA Phd Student, former ICTP Diploma Student), Farnaz Ghanbari from Iran (PhD student at Tarbiat Modares University, and former Diploma Student at ICTP); Prof. Claudio Arezzo ICTP; Maguette Beye from Senegal (Master Student at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, AIMS, and former ICTP Diploma Student); Dr. Luca Di Cerbo, UF Assoc. Prof. in the Mathematics Dept. and Math Section Head at ICTP; Prof. Claudio Arezzo, ICTP Professor; Samreena Samreena from Pakistan (Former ICTP/SISSA PhD Student); Fatemeh Zeinabadi from Iran (ICTP Diploma Student); Rubio Gunawan, from Indonesia (ICTP Diploma Student); Oluwole Faith Ayo-Oluwa from Nigeria (ICTP Diploma Student); Nada Eissa from Egypt (ICTP Diploma Student); ICTP Postdoc Dr. Chao Li, Ajayi John Fiynfoluwa from Nigeria, (ICTP Diploma Student).
Source: International Centre for Theoretical Physics
Prof. Luca Di Cerbo from the UF Mathematics Department recently organized and taught a very rewarding summer school for Mathematics and Physics students from the developing world. In collaboration with the
International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste Italy and
Mathematics Postdoc Chao and ICTP Mathematics section head Claudio Arezzo, they lectured on modern geometric analysis this past June.
The countries represented were: Uganda, Iran (x2), Indonesia, Nigeria (x2), Egypt, Pakistan, Senegal, Uzbekistan, and including the lecturers also USA, Italy and China.
The ICTP Diploma students are recruited on a yearly basis from developing world, and usually come to ICTP to refine their training after a Bachelors or Master’s degree in their home countries. After the completion of the Diploma Program, some of them go on to pursue a PhD in Europe, the USA or China.
The intense class was an introduction to geometric analysis at the graduate level, in particular towards the study of Harmonic functions and spectral properties of the Laplace operator on Riemannian manifolds. Geometric analysis plays a central role in modern mathematics, and it has experienced a tremendous growth in the last 40 years. It also figures prominently in many other areas, such as mathematical relativity, mathematical string theory, and geometric topology, as well as being essential in many applications, such as image analysis and geometric data analysis.
Di Cerbo was an ICTP senior postdoc during the academic year 2016 – 2017, and was happy to have the opportunity to visit again ICTP. "I am extremely impressed by the quality and diversity of mathematics students at ICTP," he said, and encouraged them to apply to the mathematics graduate programme at UF.
The ICTP Mathematics Section is very grateful to Di Cerbo and the US National Science Foundation for making this rewarding programme possible.
Kudos to Prof. Di Cerbo for this fantastic international collaboration!