Global Challenges for Women in Math Science

The program Global Challenges for Women in Math Science is funded by the Department of Mathematics. It aims to promote and demonstrate the excellency of female mathematicians, as well as support the development of international contacts and cooperations. There are two award categories, each with different levels - the Achievement Awards and the Entrepreneurial Awards.

Achievement Awards

The best mathematics female students at the levels Bachelor and Masters receive a prize in the form of financial support for enhancing mathematical education or presenting research results.

These awards are granted on the basis of the students' grades. The Service Office Studies selects recipients automatically based on their exam results. The chosen students will be contacted in November each year.

Female Bachelors' Students

The best female students in Bachelors' program recieve:

1st Year: Book or software
2nd Year: Refund for a software course
3rd Year: Refund for an international Summer School for Bachelor students

Female Masters' Students

The best female students in Masters' program recieve:

1st Year: Refund for a workshop or an international Summer School
2nd Year: Refund for an international conference

Entrepreneurial Awards

Every year, we also award the Entrepreneurial Awards to female and male lecturers as part of the Global Challenges for Women in Math Science. Doctoral candidates can apply for the Junior Level; Post-docs, Professors and other faculty members can apply for both the Junior and Senior levels suitable to the described objectives. The awards to which female, male and diverse candidates may apply are marked "(m/f/d)".

Junior Entrepreneurial Awards

Doctoral candidates can receive the following awards:

Presentation of research results at an international conference
Research stay at an international research institution
Research stay at the TUM Department of Mathematics
Invitation of a female mathematician for a short research stay of max.1 month to the TUM Department of Mathematics (m/f/d)
Financial support for an international female doctoral candidate (m/f/d)
Organization of and participation in scientific events held online

Senior Entrepreneurial Awards

Postdocs, Professors and other members of the Department can apply for these prizes:

Research stay at an international research institution (max. 2 months)
Invitation of an international female mathematician for a research stay of max. 2 months (m/f/d)
Financial support for an application to an international granting agency
Organisation of a workshop for female mathematicians (m/f/d)
Organization of and participation in scientific events held online

We look forward to receiving your application for the Entrepreneurial Awards of the Global Challenges for Women program in Math Science. Send your documents by e-mail to Prof. Claudia Czado.

Application

Documents

CV
Project description and motivation (1-2 pages)
Invitation letter and guest researcher's CV (if applicable)
Conference or workshop program (if applicable)
Reference letter
Budget plan with estimated costs
Table: Project summary
Please summarize your request here.

Deadline

Applications must be submitted by 1 February 2023.

Description

Detailed project description in the application from 2017

Women in Math Science introduce themselves

Meet our winners of the Entrepreneurial and the Achievement Awards and their research projects.

Dr. Alexandra Neamtu, TUM Department for Mathematics
"In my project, I study dynamic properties and the long-term behavior of stochastic differential equations.This modern research topic makes it possible to model complex systems from the natural sciences, engineering and economicsand to predict whether a particular phenomenon will occur.
Therefore, stochastic equations are used to describe the transitions of the states of a physical system - for example, the change between ice ages and interglacial periods on Earth, currents and waves in an ocean, or the development of a stock price. In order to make predictions, randomness is appropriately quantified and calculated using mathematical methods.
We consider random dynamic systems that are driven by Gaussian processes with temporal memory. An example of such a process is the fractal Brownian motion. We published the first results in the preprint "Rough center manifolds" and I will introduce them in May 2019 at the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems in Snowbird, USA. I will use the money from the award for the journey."
Carolin Loos, Helmholtz Center Munich
"In my research, I develop a mathematical modeling framework which facilitates to account for variability between individual cells. The framework combines flexible statistical models with a priori information about cellular signaling pathways. It was already successfully applied to study pain sensitization in primary sensory neurons.
With the Entrepreneurial Award 2018, I was able to stay some weeks in the Sander lab at the cBio Center, Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. My future research will benefit a lot from the expertise I gained during that time and from the network I was able to establish. Furthermore, I participated in the 26th Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) in Chicago where I gave two presentations."
Dantong Wang, Helmholtz Center Munich
"In biological models, there are usually several parameters, which need to be estimated. In most cased, there parameters are different for different cells, meaning that they are not constants, but distributions. Therefore, I used a so called mixed effect modelling method to capture these variability in my project.
In addition, further methods are required to propagate these parameters through the model (mostly nonlinear). I implemented sigma point methods as well as sampling based methods to approximate the distributions. The accuracy and computation time of these methods are compared using several toy models and one biological pathway model, the JAK/STAT model."
Dr. Diana Conache, TUM Department of Mathematics
"I plan to use my 2019 grant of the "Global Challenges for Women in Math Science program" to visit Prof. Dr. Arnaud le Ny in Paris. Our common project refers to one-sided stochastic descriptions of models appearing in statistical mechanics, which have a two-sided stochastic description.
This project builds on Prof. le Ny's work studying models with long-range interactions, and a paper published last year with my former TUM colleague Stein Andreas Bethuelsen, which studies one-sided properties of a renormalized Ising model. 2018, I used my "Entrepreneurial Award" to present the results of this paper "One-sided continuity properties for the Schonmann projection" during the "Stochastic Days" in Freiburg, which is the largest stochastics meeting in Germany."
Dr. Anette Moeller, Technical University Clausthal
"In weather prediction, ensemble prediction systems (EPS) typically generate probabilistic forecast ensembles. Each ensemble member is the output of a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Statistical post-processing models improve the reliability of the prediction.
In our research project we develop new models that explore the dependence structure between weather variables and their ensemble forecasts with so-called Vine Copulas in a data driven way. We have already developed a model for improved temperature forecasts and are now planning to predict wind speed and precipitation under spatial or temporal dependencies or extreme weather events.
We spent the money provided by the Entrepreneurial Award of the "Global Challenges for Women in Math Science" program for two research visits for collaboration with Claudia Czado's working group at TUM. In addition, in 2018, I gave talks on our project at two conferences."
Dr. Judith Cerit, TUM Department of Mathematics
"We investigate the development of resistance to a DNA damaging anti-cancer drug in a population of tumor cells. Therefore, we use a hybrid mathematical model - this means, a model which is a combination of two different modelling approaches, namely an agent-based model and partial differential equations. The model is implemented numerically and simulations are performed to explore the conditions leading to resistance.
Most importantly, given that this approach is single-cell based, it allows to track in both, time and space, the history of each cell. This led us to investigate resistance at both the single and the population level. Given that the model is spatially explicit, we are able to unveiled the key role that the tumour microenvironment plays in resistance development.
"With the grant form the Entrepreneurial Award I will visit the Moffitt Cancer Research Center in Tampa Florida to further my collaboration and hopefully bring my project to publication."
Katherina von Dichter, TUM Department of Mathematics
"The main subject of my project are geometric inequalities for convex compact sets. Convexity naturally appears in many areas of mathematics, such as Linear Programming, Probability Theory, Functional Analysis, Partial Differential Equations, Information Theory and the Geometry of Numbers. For instance, density functions of the important probability measures (like Gaussian, Exponential or Uniform) are logarithmic concave functions.
Although convexity is a simple to formulate property, convex bodies possess a surprisingly rich structure. The research on geometric inequalities takes not only place deep in the center of Convex Geometry, but it also spreads its branches into a variety of surrounding areas, such as Computational Geometry, Banach Space Theory or Asymptotic Geometric Analysis. Fields where computations are done with high-dimensional data sets, such as biology, physics, astronomy and meteorology, can benefit from applying techniques derived from this result."
Lea Schuh, TUM Fakultät für Mathematik
"Melanome sind Krebserkrankungen der pigmentierten Hautzellen. Etwa 80 Prozent der Patienten erleiden einen Rückfall nach einer zuerst erfolgreichen Therapie - hierbei überleben einige Zellen und entwickeln eine Resistenz gegen das angewandte Medikament. Dies wiederum führt zu unkontrolliertem Zellwachstum. Anhand mathematischer Modelle versuchen wir, die Mechanismen zu verstehen, welche zu Therapie-Resistenz in Melanomzellen führen.

Der ''Global Challenges for Women in Math Science Award 2019" ermöglicht es, mir meine Kollaborationspartner an der University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA, zu besuchen, damit ich dieses Projekt weiterführen kann."
Dr. Lexuri Fernandez, TUM Department of Mathematics
"Due to a higher life quality in developed and developing countries, the life expectation of human population has increased over the past decades. Therefore, the insurance sector needs to adjust business plans by studying the human mortality and, therefore, analyzing the risk that individuals might live longer than expected. In this project we - Pierre Devolder, Lexuri Fernández und Donation Hainaut - aim at mathematically modelling the mortality rate.
I presented our preceding research project „Stochastic Mortality in a Lévy Process Framework and Application to Longevity Products“ at the 31st International Congress of Actuaries (ICA CIA) that took place in Berlin. Therefore, I used the funding provided by the Entrepreneurial Award 2018."
Lisa Amrhein, Helmholtz Center Munich
"I am interested in identifying clonal heterogeneity in cancer tissues mainly in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). For this, I focus on the statistical analysis and parameterization of transcriptional heterogeneity from mRNA-Seq counts taken from small groups of cells.
I received the Entrepreneurial Award in 2018 and used the support for participating at the “Single Cell Biology” Conference in Hinxton, UK. There, biologists, method developers and computational modelers presented their work on single-cell biology. During the poster sessions I got the chance to show my poster on "Probability distributions for scRNA-Seq data" and discuss it with many interested colleagues.
I will use the remaining part of the money for the Symposia "Single Cells: Technology to Biology" in February 2019 in Singapore. This time I will present a poster on "Stochastic profiling for mRNA sequencing data"."
Luciana Dalla Valle, University of Plymouth
"Fine particulate matter is a key driver of global health and therefore it is vital to accurately model and estimate the exposure to this airborne contaminant, especially in areas of severe and persistent air pollution such as China and its biggest cities like Beijing.
The aim of our project is to develop flexible multivariate methodology, which is able to accurately model and predict the levels of fine particulate matter and human exposure to air pollution in Beijing.
I used the grant to fund a research visit at the TUM Center for Mathematics, to collaborate with Professor Claudia Czado. The work has been fundamental for a working paper entitled "A Bayesian Nonlinear State Space Copula Model to Predict Air Pollution in Beijing". The paper will be submitted to a top international statistical journal."
$Sarah Braun$
Sarah Braun, Master's graduate of the Department of Mathematics
"During my studies, I received several Achievement Awards from the Women in Math Science program, which helped me, among other things, to finance two study visits abroad and to obtain specialized literature. Above all, the award honors and rewards someones own academic achievements. That strengthened my self-confidence and spurred me to embark on my own doctorate after Master's graduation."
Susanne Pieschner, Helmholtz Center Munich
"In my PhD project, I develop stochastic dynamic models for heterogeneous molecular biological systems and work on the efficient parameter estimation for such models. The aim is to gain a better understanding of dynamic intracellular processes, e.g. the translation kinetics after mRNA transfection. I used the money from the Entrepreneurial Award in 2018 to attend the DYNSTOCH Meeting in Porto, Portugal, where I gave a talk titled "Bayesian Inference for Diffusion: Using Higher-Order Approximations for Transition Densities". Moreover, I presented a poster titled "Modelling mRNA Transfection Using Diffusion Processes" at the ISMB and the ISCB Student Council Symposium in Chicago, USA, where I received an "Outstanding Poster" Award."
Yiyao Chen, Clinic and Polyclinic for Nuclear Medicine
"Many cancer risk models are constructed with data from prior clinical trials and used to provide the probability of cancer for future samples. The ability to provide effective predictions for various new samples is a key measure of model performance that can only be assessed in external validation. Therefore, external validation is an essential step in cancer risk model development.
To better understand what would happen in validation experiments if the training and test samples are similar, we introduce a validation method that incorporates the quantification of similarity across samples into the analysis, which is inspired by the casual inference theory. Such approach can remedy the deficiencies of current fashions in this field that ignore the heterogeneity between data sets and its results can be better interpreted.
The Entrepreneurial Award will be used to attend the 62nd International Statistical Institute (ISI) World Statistics Congress, in which I would like to have an opportunity to present and discuss my project."