Impressions from "Interscience" - the first symposium of the Vienna Doctoral Schools
Contribution: Vienna Doctoral Schools | October 2017
On September 14th and 15th 2017, the Großer & Kleiner Festsaal of the University of Vienna were the setting of the first joint conference of the four Vienna Doctoral Schools (VDSs): “Cognition, Behaviour and Neuroscience (CoBeNe)”, “Mathematics”, “Molecules of Life (MoL)” and “Physics”.
The symposium has been a first and very successful endeavor of the VDSs to bring together scientists of different research areas to promote the exchange of knowledge and techniques. Each VDS invited a world-leading scientist in their field, scientists whose research is at the crossroads of different disciplines. Their achievements are a clear example that collaboration and integration of different disciplines are the key to success.
The VDS “CoBeNe” hosted Prof. Asya Rolls, an assistant professor at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Prof. Rolls, whose successful career includes awards such as the Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, presented her latest major findings on the tight connection between mind and body. In particular, she showed how positive emotional states influence and boost the immune system. These findings can be important for improving therapeutic approaches to pathologies strongly influenced by the immune response or to explain phenomena like the “placebo effect”.
Very different was the talk held by the guest of the VDS “Mathematics”, Prof. Pierre-Louis Lions of the Collège de France. Prof. Lions is particularly famous for his contribution to the study of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) and other findings relevant for the field of mathematics and physics, and has been awarded the Fields Medal (sometimes called the “Nobel Prize” of Mathematics). Prof. Lions presented his recent theory of mean-field games, a novel class of PDEs, and its potential applications to several real situations, especially in economics.
The guest speaker of the VDS “MoL”, Prof. Thomas Pollard, is a Professor at Yale and his academic achievements include being President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Prof. Pollard's research focuses on the study of the cytoskeleton and the cytokinesis and shows how the combination of molecular biology, high-end microscopy and mathematical models can lead to major discoveries. An example is the new microscopy technique developed by his team, allowing the visualization of the growth of actin filaments in real time.
Prof. Seth Lloyd, invited by the VDS “Physics”, is the Director of the WM Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Lloyd focuses on the role of information in physical and mechanical systems, particularly in quantum mechanics. He also proposed the first technologically feasible design of a quantum computer. In his talk, Prof. Lloyd discussed quantum machine learning and specifically the applicability of quantum computers to find patterns in big data, where conventional computers fail. Moreover, he discussed possible applications of the quantum approach to chemistry, finance and other fields.
Besides the external guest speakers, the stage was reserved for doctoral students from the four VDSs. On the first day, Manjil Saikia from the VDS “Mathematics” talked about a remarkable sequence of numbers, Jürger Goller from the VDS “CoBeNe” presented his research on visual aesthetics, Karolina Zielinska from the VDS “Molecules of Life” taught the audience about the molecular basis for calcium regulation and Irati Alonso Calafell from the VDS “Physics” introduced everybody to quantum cryptography.
On the second day, Giulia Cimarelli from the VDS “CoBeNe” compared dog-owner relationships and dog-dog relationships, Florian Pflug from the VDS “Molecules of Life” talked about the difficulties when counting molecules, Jernej Cinc from the VDS “Mathematics” elaborated on the plane fixed point property problem and Filippo Fedi from the VDS “Physics” took the audience on a journey from the stone age to the nano age.
During two poster sessions many more participants of the “Interscience” symposium had the chance to present their research. Explaining scientific research topics is never an easy task, but talking to a very mixed and diverse audience poses an additional challenge. The many discussions that took place in front of the posters showed, that communicating scientific research between disciplines is a worthwhile endeavor.
The symposium also hosted a panel discussion open to the public. During the event, the four keynote speakers discussed hot topics such as the necessity to improve communication between scientists and society and the dangers and opportunities of making raw data freely available.
Science, research and innovation are not only hard work but also creativity and fun. To celebrate this, the students of the VDSs staged an impressive science slam. The competition challenged the students to find alternative and artistic ways to present their PhD projects. The competition included the projection of videos, costumes, dancing performances and music.