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MiS Profile

Tobias Ried

I am currently group leader of the research group Probability and Variational Methods in Partial Differential Equations at Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences.

Research

My research is broadly centred around PDEs with links to variational problems and probability, as well as applications in kinetic theory, statistical physics, material sciences and quantum mechanics. Quite often, very few and simple basic mechanisms can lead to a rich class of complex phenomena, whose description involves interesting mathematics. The projects I am working on are related to a series of current and highly active lines of research: optimal transportation, singular stochastic PDEs, Boltzmann equation, pattern formation problems, solitons. These diverse projects, though seemingly unconnected, upon closer inspection often share some common features:

  • Ideas from regularity theory play a crucial role,
  • nonlocal interactions are driving mechanisms,
  • the analysis of continuum models is combined with probabilistic tools and thinking.

I obtained my PhD from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in October 2017. The topics of my doctoral research, supervised by Dirk Hundertmark, were smoothing properties of the Boltzmann equation, the study of convergence to equilibrium in the Kac model, as well as the existence of solitons in optical fiber cables with periodically varying dispersion.

Before, I studied Theoretical and Mathematical Physics at TU and LMU Munich, where my main research interests were in many-body quantum mechanics. In my Master’s thesis, supervised by Simone Warzel (TUM), I studied quantum spin systems in random energy landscapes.

After my PhD, I stayed one more year at KIT as a postdoc within the CRC 1173 “Wave Phenomena: Analysis and Numerics”. Since October 2018, I have been at the MPI in Leipzig, first as a postdoc and since 2021 as a group leader. In the academic year 2021/22, I had a substitute professor position at LMU Munich, and in the summer of 2022, I was a substitute professor at Leipzig University.

Publications