Exploring the Power of Path Signatures – IMPRS Combo IV
Published September 26, 2025
From 24 to 26 September, our MPI hosted the fourth edition of the IMPRS Combo workshop, bringing together around 40 PhD students and PostDocs for an interdisciplinary deep dive into the Path Signature.
Originally introduced by Kuo-Tsai Chen in the 1950s, path signatures form an infinite collection of tensors defined by iterated integrals of a path’s coordinate functions. Today, they are at the heart of rough path theory in stochastic analysis and play an increasingly important role in diverse applications ranging from quantitative finance and data science to machine learning and mathematical physics.
The workshop combined introductory lectures with discussions across fields, allowing participants to explore the algebraic and analytic structures behind path signatures and their relevance in modern research. By fostering exchange and broadening horizons, IMPRS Combo IV once again highlighted the value of interdisciplinary learning within the mathematical sciences.
Hanna Tseran successfully defended her PhD thesis on activation functions in neural networks. She continues to work on deep learning theory in the Matsuo Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. Well done Hanna, and our best wishes!
We extend our congratulations to Markus Tempelmayr on the successful defense of his thesis “Algebraic and probabilistic aspects of regularity structures”! He joins the University of Münster as a postdoctoral researcher.
Congrats to our new Dr. rer. nat. Rida Ait El Manssour on the successful defense of his dissertation on the study of combinatorial properties in algebraic differential equations. Rida recently joined the IRIF Institute in Paris. Well done!
Congratulations to Nono Saha Cyrille Merleau on the successful defense of his PhD thesis on the computational study of RNA folding. Nono Saha will join ScaDS.AI as a postdoc, where he will continue to explore biological systems.