Building Bridges Between Algebraic Geometry and Various Scientific Fields

Máté László Telek has been honored with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship to study positive real solutions of polynomial equations.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships support early career researchers in pursuing their research careers. In his project “Positive Solutions in the Sciences” Máté L. Telek will investigate positive real solutions of polynomial equations arising from various scientific disciplines using methods from real algebraic geometry. The primary applications envisioned are in particle physics, but the project also extends to biochemical reaction networks and phylogenetics.

The project will be conducted at Leipzig University under the supervision of Rainer Sinn. It is scheduled to start in January 2026 and will run for two years, with a total funding of 200,000 EUR.

From a high-level perspective, the project aims to build bridges between real algebraic geometry and various scientific fields. While algorithms in Real Algebraic Geometry are often associated with poor worst-case complexity, many scientific problems do not fall into this category. In fact, these algorithms can often be optimized and applied efficiently by considering the specific characteristics of these problems. The goal of the project is to provide further evidence of this phenomenon and to extend the applicability of real algebraic geometry.

Máté L. Telek is a postdoctoral researcher at our institute in the Nonlinear Algebra group under the supervision of Bernd Sturmfels. He received his PhD in 2024 at the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Elisenda Feliu. His research interests include real algebraic geometry, tropical geometry and their applications, such as in particle physics and chemical reaction networks.