Mathematician accepted into the Emmy Noether Programme
Approval for the project of mathematician Dr. Robin J. Sroka: The German Research Foundation (DFG) has awarded the researcher working at the University of Münster with approximately 1.3 million euros in funding as part of the Emmy Noether Programme. Over the next six years, this will enable him to establish his own research group “Cohomology and K-Theory: Exploring New Connections”.
“Münster offers the ideal environment for the new research group,” says Sroka. “Thanks to the Cluster of Excellence ‘Mathematics Münster’ and the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Geometry: Deformations and Rigidity’, there is an exceptional density of experts from various fields of mathematics here. Since our project focuses on connections between different areas, we will benefit greatly from the exchange with our colleagues.”
The DFG’s Emmy Noether programme aims to provide outstanding early-career researchers with academic independence and prepare them for a university professorship.
About the project
Mathematics studies complex structures, such as symmetries, number systems, or geometric objects, and seeks to distinguish them based on certain structural features. Two important “tools” for this are cohomology and K-theory. Both help, in different ways, to reveal hidden patterns and fundamental properties of mathematical objects.
Cohomological stability is a phenomenon that emerges from the interplay of these two tools. It arises in situations where sequences of mathematical objects are studied that, together, form a “higher” algebraic structure. Researchers are interested in both the cohomology of the sequence’s terms and the K-theory of the higher algebraic structure. Cohomological stability establishes a relationship between patterns in the cohomology of the sequence’s terms and their shared K-theory. Thus, it allows “cohomological” and “K-theoretical” information to be converted into each other.
Sroka’s Emmy Noether Group will investigate new variants of this connection in areas where such links are not yet well understood. The goal is to prove new relations between cohomology and K-theory and to use this understanding to shed light on questions from topology, algebra, geometry, and the theory of dynamical systems.
Profile
Dr. Robin J. Sroka has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Münster since 2023 and as an investigator at the Cluster of Excellence Mathematics Münster since 2024. Currently, he is also pursuing part of his research on “High-dimensional cohomology of arithmetic groups” within a “Young Research Group”, together with his colleague Dr. Benjamin Brück. Before coming to Münster, Sroka was a postdoctoral researcher at McMaster University in Canada and a junior fellow at the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Sweden. He completed his doctorate in 2021 at the University of Copenhagen.