Activities
Upcoming
- On February 21, 2026, I will give a talk at the Landesrunde der Mathematikolympiade on Conway’s Game of Life, illustrating how cellular automata can model complex phenomena. (in German)
- On March 11, 2026, 5pm, together with Manon Bischoff I will be hosting a live episode of the Eigenraum podcast in the Stadtbibliothek Magdeburg as part of the MathemaTHEK program. (in German)
- Martina Juhnke-Kubitzke, Raman Sanyal, Christian Stump and I organize the 2026 Combinatorial Coworkspace, March 22-27, 2026.
Key Projects
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I am a member of the program committee of the DFG-SPP 2458 Combinatorial Synergies. In the first funding period I am the PI of the project Finding short polynomials. Program homepage: combinatorial-synergies.de
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Co-editor-in-chief of Algebraic Statistics together with Sonja Petrovic.
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Podcast host of “Eigenraum”. Available (in German) in all common podcast apps.
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I am a Principal Investigator in the DFG Research Training Group MathCore which is educting excellent PhD students in Magdeburg. Program homepage: mathcore.ovgu.de.
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Together with Johannes Rauh, in 2010 we created the Markov bases database, a research data project in toric algebra and algebraic statistics.
Editorial boards
- Editor-in-Chief Algebraic Statistics.
- Former Editor of the Journal of Software for Algebra and Geometry, 2018-2025.
Conference organization
- Together with Carlos Amendola, Mathias Drton and Ben Hollering we organized Algebraic Statistics in Munich, March 2025
- Program committee co-chair of the SIAM AGAG 2023 conference with Cynthia Vinzant
- Martina Juhnke-Kubitzke, Raman Sanyal, Christian Stump and I regularly organize Combinatorial Coworkspaces.
- In April 2017 I organized the Oberwolfach Workshop “Algebraic Statistics” with Caroline Uhler, Mathias Drton, and Bernd Sturmfels. Here is the corresponding Snapshot.
- In December 2022 I organized the Oberwolfach Workshop “Algebraic Structures in Statistical Methodology” with Mathias Drton, Seth Sullivant and Caroline Uhler.
- I organized MOCCA 2014 in Levico Terme, Italy with Alex Constantinescu and Matteo Varbaro
Software and data
- My github account is tom111 and here are some statistics on it. I’m also contributing to 4ti2, Macaulay2, etc.
- SumsOfSquares.m2: A Macaulay2 package for sums of squares. Joint work with Diego Cifuentes and Pablo Parrilo.
- GraphBinomials: Using search on graphs to answer questions about binomial ideals.
- Binomials.m2 is a Macaulay2 package for computations with binomial ideals.
- MBDB is the Markov Bases Database, a research data project in toric algebra and algebraic statistics, co-maintened since 2010 together with Johannes Rauh.
- www.gaussoids.de is a database of gaussoids.
- Cipi is a threaded C++ implementation of iterative proportional fitting.
Some past events
- SPP2458 Annual Conference, Hannover, September 3-5, 2025.
- At Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften, June 14, 2025 in Magdeburg, Mathias Magdowski and I [hosted a live podcast event]. Listen to the recording here: Eigenraum Episode 50.
- IMSI Semester “Algebraic Statistics”. I spoke in the workshop on Graphical Models, October 9-13, 2023, Chicago, USA
- MaRDI Workshop + Barcamp on October 19/20, 2023 in Magdeburg.
- The 3-way-interaction seminar was an algebraic statistics seminar in the Berlin-Leipzig-Magdeburg area.
- Research Data in discrete math, March 13 - 14, 2023, Leipzig.
- Together with Mathias Drton, Seth Sullivant, and Caroline Uhler we organized Algebraic Statistics at MFO, Dec 4-10 2022
- Leipzig-Magdeburg Seminar day, August 9, 2022, Leipzig
- Geometry meets Combinatorics in Bielefeld, Sep 5-9, 2022
- CCAAGS, June 27 - July 1, 2022, University of Washington, Seattle
- 155 years of commutative algebra, Osnabrück, June 13 -17, 2022. I gave a short course on short polynomials in the school Mon-Wed. For lecture notes click here
- MFO-RIMS Tandem Workshop: Symmetries on Polynomial Ideals and Varieties, Sep 5 - Sep 11, 2021
- Together with Paul Breiding and Peter Benner I organized the 1st East German Tensor Day, Sep 1, 2021 in Magdeburg
- Together with Alex Constantinescu I organized a minisymposium on commutative algebra at SIAM AGAG 2021
- Eliana Duarte and I ran the MathCoRe Compact Course on Tensors, March 29 - April 9, 2021
- Prague Stochastics 2019 – Workshop in the memory of Fero Matus, August 19-23, 2019.
- Everbody in the group was at SIAM AGAG 2019 in Bern
- ICERM Semester “Nonlinear Algebra”: I visited ICERM Sep 5-28 and Nov 11-17, 2018.
- Together with Eliana Duarte and Heather Harrington I have organized a Macaulay2 workshop at the MPI-MiS in Leipzig June 4-8, 2018.
- I taught Binomial ideals at the Lukecin school 2017, Sep 3-9 in Lukecin, Poland.
- I organized a Macaulay2 Workshop in Atlanta with Anton Leykin, July 27-29, 2017.
- From 2010 to 2016 I was a developer of Gentoo Linux
- Model Selection Days
Outreach and community organization
- ganzOhr 2025, Wissenschaftspodcast-Barcamp, September 27.-28, 2025, Uni Innsbruck.
- Together with Mathias Magdowski we ran the 1. Fediverse Day Magdeburg at OvGU Magdeburg, 6.10.2025
Podcasts
- Eigenraum is my currently running podcast.
- Together with Petra Schwer we published 52 episodes of our podcast “Pi ist genau 3” (in German)
- “Tensor voices” was a short podcast series about tensors that I recorded with Eliana Duarte and fabulous guests. You can still find the six episodes in your podcast app.
Finished DFG Grant
- “Detecting multistationarity in mass-action systems” with Carsten Conradi resulted in this paper
Student successes
- My former and first PhD student Tobias Windisch is a professor at Hochschule Kempten.
- My former student Frank Röttger is a professor at TU Eindhoven.
- My former student Tobias Boege has won the 2022 PhD award of the OvG University Magdeburg. Congratulations. -> Prize Video (2min) <-