[Om-announce] Doctoral student position in Mathematical Knowledge Management

[Lars Hellström]

The TL;DR is that the "Catalogue of Mathematical Objects" project I announced in a talk at CICM 2023 may now recruit a doctoral student. This is a full-time 5 year employment (80% research + 20% teaching).

Closing date for application: 2024-05-06
Location: Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden
Link to formal announcement: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb103.reachmee.com%2Fext%2FI018%2F1151%2Fjob%3Fsite%3D8%26lang%3DUK%26validator%3D2efd9e54ee423d53334ac7960e3b4e03%26job_id%3D2404&data=05%7C02%7C%7Ccfe0403b01df4b9a755108dc5d1cd0d6%7Ccc7df24760ce4a0f9d75704cf60efc64%7C0%7C0%7C638487626896342837%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=jAypOF8zgsnttK5Se8pAzc%2FSc2Z%2FfyWwOpJ0fJhxftI%3D&reserved=0

This is part of a broader investment in interdisciplinary research (math + something else); there are 5–6 positions offered, and several projects for applicants to choose between. See below for the description of this MKM project.

Note also that this is not exclusively an applied project; rather there is a component of doing "ordinary" research in mathematics (quite possibly pure math), intended to foster an understanding in the community aspects of mathematical research. Thus for a student with aptitude for programming, but whose research interests are more in pure math, this could be a good opportunity.


Catalogue of Mathematical Objects

The goal of this project is ultimately to create a new branch of the mathematics literature, that focuses on examples and definitions rather than theorems. The reason for doing this is that having the right examples to study is often crucial for making progress on a research problem, but traditional publication puts little weight on examples, so finding one with sought properties in the literature can be close to hopeless.

The idea is to set up a database of mathematical objects — their constructions and properties, as well as the definitions of those properties, and whatever additional materials might be appropriate to get a grip on them – which is searchable online, and where mathematicians may publish such nuggets which would not fit as separate works in traditional journals. As with Wikipedia, content would be user-generated and user-reviewed, but unlike Wikipedia it would be open for claims not previously published elsewhere. Because examples conversely do not have to be new, the threshold for contributing to a field where one is not an expert is lowered, encouraging cross-disciplinary advancements.

The successful applicant would participate in building the infrastructure for the Catalogue. Parts of this will involve creating the website, and experience of this is a merit of note. Likewise experience of software development where there is not tight integration; various technologies to be employed in the Catalogue include TeX, graph databases of the RDF kind, and digital signatures. Familiarity with these is a plus, but on several points not expected. 

The successful applicant would also conduct research in mathematics unrelated to the Catalogue; the area here is not constrained, except that it must be in some area for which the MDU math department can provide qualified supervision. The purpose of this is that the applicant should develop an understanding of and familiarity with the practices of the mathematics research community at large, since that will make the applicant better equipped to make sound decisions on the design of the Catalogue.

Moreover this is a multidisciplinary position. The successful applicant will get a cosupervisor from outside the math department, with expertise in the development of (as appropriate) products, services, organisations, etc. Such methods shall be used to scientifically evaluate and improve how the Catalogue works together with its users, for example to identify workflows that are unnecessarily cumbersome or details that lend themselves to destructive behaviour. Part of the research time will be spent with the research group of this cosupervisor, to develop a practical understanding of the methods and theories used there.

It is expected that the resulting thesis will contain material both on the work with the Catalogue and from the unrelated mathematics research.

Principal investigator:
Lars Hellström <lars.hellstrom at mdu.se>

Slides of recent presentation (held for a "general audience" at an algebra/geometry workshop):
https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.noncommutativegeometry.se%2Fsnag%2F2024%2Ftalks%2FSNAG2024_Lars_Hellstrom.pdf&data=05%7C02%7C%7Ccfe0403b01df4b9a755108dc5d1cd0d6%7Ccc7df24760ce4a0f9d75704cf60efc64%7C0%7C0%7C638487626896342837%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MaR9WoLLmjzhXQkqHnYI8pUcmeBpEEC10Etl7WXUyNc%3D&reserved=0