As usual, we will have two invited speakers this year, one internal and one external. They have been chosen by popular vote. We're looking forward to their talks!

Prof. Dr. Claudia Totzeck

University of Wuppertal

Claudia Totzeck has been a Professor of continuous optimization at the University of Wuppertal since 2021. After completing her PhD at TU Kaiserslautern, she received the Margarete-von-Wrangell Fellowship, a prestigious German program that supports outstanding female researchers in qualifying for professorships. Her research interests include consensus-based optimization, optimization with ode/pde, space mapping for stochastic interacting particle systems, as well as mean-field limits and optimization of port-Hamiltonian systems.

For more information visit her webpage at University of Wuppertal or her personal webpage.

(Photo: Nicole Becker)

Prof. Dr. Marita Thomas

Freie Universität Berlin

Marita Thomas is Professor for Applied Analysis at Freie Universität Berlin since 2022. She is the head of the research group Bulk-Interface Processes at the Weierstrass Institute. Her scientific interest lies in material modeling, damage and fracture mechanics, coupling of optoelectronics with thermomechanics, and variational methods, Gamma-convergence, functions of bounded variation.

Thomas holds a PhD from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

More information can be found on her webpage at WIAS Berlin or at her personal webpage.

(Photo source:https://www.wias-berlin.de/~thomas/)