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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
How does water move through a filter with coffee? This question is not so easy to answer, as neighboring areas in the moist coffee powder influence each other. How the hot water moves through the roasted powder is also governed by stochastic processes. Answers are provided by what are known as “percolation models,” which mathematician Dr. Alexis Prévost is investigating. He joined the University of Bonn from the University of Geneva and now leads an Emmy Noether group. It is being provided with up to 1.3 million euros of funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
“My project is about stochastic processes that play a role in nature and in many areas of science,” says Dr. Alexis Prévost. “A better understanding of these models not only helps to further develop mathematical principles but can also enable applications in other sciences in the long term.” They extend from material research and theoretical physics to probability theory. Examples include questions about how ice melts to water or how certain structures form in networks.
The topic of the new Emmy Noether junior research group “Universality classes for strongly correlated models” concerns complex systems in which regions in close proximity influence each other. Such “strongly correlated models” occur, for instance, in physics or biology when one wants to understand how magnetism is distributed in materials or how enzyme gels are degraded. “My goal is to better understand such systems mathematically and find general laws that are also important for other scientific questions,” says Prévost, who is also an associate member of the Cluster of Excellence Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the University of Bonn.
The mathematician works with researchers from various countries and universities, including the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He also wants to cooperate with researchers at the University of Bonn, particularly from the Transdisciplinary Research Area “Modelling.”
Since the beginning of March, the researcher has led an Emmy Noether group at the Institute for Applied Mathematics, which gives outstanding researchers the opportunity to qualify for a university professorship. The research group is being provided with up to 1.3 million euros of funding by the German Research Foundation. The term is initially three years and can be extended by a further three years following a positive interim assessment.
Path to the University of Bonn
Alexis Prévost, born in Versailles (France) in 1992, studied mathematics in Paris and obtained his doctorate at the University of Cologne. He then worked at the University of Cambridge and the University of Geneva. Since March 2025, he has been the leader of an Emmy Noether group at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the University of Bonn. He was awarded the Förderpreis of the Fachgruppe Stochastik in 2023.
Dr. Alexis Prévost
Institute for Applied Mathematics
University of Bonn
Phone +49 (0)228/7362295
E-mail: prevost@iam.uni-bonn.de
Dr. Alexis Prévost now heads an Emmy Noether group at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the U ...
Photo: Albane Prévost
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Dr. Alexis Prévost now heads an Emmy Noether group at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the U ...
Photo: Albane Prévost
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