idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
Constructor University welcomed Professor Abbas Ali Saberi to its School of Science faculty after the physics researcher was awarded a Heisenberg Professorship under the esteemed Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Heisenberg Programme. Considered one of Germany’s most respected pathways toward long-term academic tenure, the Heisenberg professorship is granted to researchers whose work demonstrates outstanding scientific excellence. The funding will support his ambitious research in statistical physics and random matrix theory. We sat down with Professor Saberi to talk about what this milestone means to him, his research plans, and why he chose Constructor University as his academic home.
CONSTRUCTOR UNIVERSITY (CU): Hello Professor Saberi, and congratulations on receiving this prestigious professorship. What does this honor mean to you and your academic career?
PROF: ABBAS SABERI (PAS): The Heisenberg Program is a major milestone in my scientific life. On a personal level, it feels like confirmation that the ideas I have been working on for so many years are on a solid path. Professionally, this funding gives me the most valuable resource in science: time. It offers stability to build a coherent research program and a small research group, so I can pursue these questions in the long term without worrying about the next short-term funding cycle.
CU: The Heisenberg Professorship is highly competitive, which contributes to its prestigious standing. What was it like going through that process and being among the small number selected?
PAS: for me, the Heisenberg Program is so much more than financial support. It provides a strong framework for my future work at Constructor University and gives me the chance to build something lasting, both scientifically and in mentoring young researchers who will hopefully carry these ideas further. Because it’s highly competitive and externally evaluated as well, it strengthens the visibility and standing of this research area within the university.
When I read the DFG reviews, I could see that the referees really went deep into the proposal, understood the core of the project and still gave very constructive and supportive comments. This careful and positive evaluation meant a lot to me and gave me a great deal of motivation.
POWERING CLIMATE RESEARCH
CU: What can you tell us about your research into “long-range correlated random matrices,” which your Heisenberg Professorship will now fund?
PAS: My research sits at the interface of statistical physics, complex systems and random matrix theory. In very simple terms, I study how many small random influences, which are not independent but correlated over long distances, combine to produce large-scale patterns.
CU: That sounds very complex! Could you use an analogy or example to illustrate what this might look like in real-world terms?
PAS: A simple picture to think about are the daily temperatures in two cities, say Bremen and Shanghai. Now imagine covering the whole world with a grid of such points and for every pair of grid points asking: when it's warmer than average in city A, is it warmer or colder in city B, and if so by how much? This can show us how different places “move together” and also quantify the extent to which two locations are correlated. On Earth, these temperature variations can in fact be correlated over very long distances.
Once you have this matrix, its eigenvalues and eigenvectors come in. Each eigenvalue-eigenvector pair corresponds to a typical “pattern of temperatures” over the globe. The largest eigenvalue might describe a pattern where nearly the entire planet warms or cools together. The next might capture see-saw patterns between the tropics and mid-latitudes, and so on. In this way, the matrix and its eigenvalues turn millions of local correlations into a small set of understandable, large-scale climate modes, which helps us understand large-scale climate behaviour and improve climate prediction models. That is exactly the kind of structure we are trying to understand and generalize in my work.
CU: What drew you to this line of research?
PAS: The idea of encoding complex, many-body behavior in a matrix has a long history, starting in nuclear physics, where random matrices were first used to describe the complicated energy spectra of heavy nuclei. In my work, I take this viewpoint and generalize it to the case where the correlations are long-ranged and structured, and then study how this changes the statistics of the eigenvalues themselves.
What fascinates me about this, is that by tuning how strong and long-ranged these correlations are, the eigenvalue spectrum can undergo something like a phase transition. In our earlier work, we found that as we change the strength of long-range correlations, the eigenvalue distribution can move from heavy-tailed behavior to almost perfectly Gaussian statistics, and in some limits back to the classical semicircle law of standard random matrix theory. This offers a very clean way to see how structure and disorder compete, and it connects beautifully to ideas from critical phenomena and percolation.
This project is also exciting for me on a personal level because it combines several threads of my past work into a single program: universality in percolation, extreme fluctuations, critical phenomena and now long-range correlated random matrices as a unifying framework. The Heisenberg funding gives me the time and stability to follow this line in a systematic way and to build a research team around it.
THE CONSTRUCTOR DIFFERENCE
CU: Constructor University has the privilege of welcoming you and your research for this professorship. What ultimately led you to our campus?
PAS: What attracted me to Constructor University was a combination of scientific fit and the atmosphere on campus. Scientifically, I felt that Constructor is an excellent place to build a modern program in statistical physics and complex systems. The university has a strong focus on quantitative science and on interdisciplinary work, which fits very well with how I like to do research.
CU: Why is that? Can you tell us more about the interdisciplinary approach at Constructor and how it appeals to you?
PAS: Since my projects often connect theory with real systems, I need an environment where communicating across fields is easy and natural. Here, I am part of a School of Science that brings together chemists, bio-chemists, biologists and Earth and environmental scientists, and I am in close contact with colleagues in mathematics and mathematical physics. For someone working on complex systems with links to materials, geophysical surfaces, climate data and rigorous theoretical modelling, it is ideal to have this combination of expertise only a few steps away. If I have an idea related to, for example, atmospheric data or properties of a material, I can simply walk over to a colleague’s office and discuss it. This kind of everyday proximity is essential for genuine interdisciplinary research.
CU: You also mentioned the “atmosphere on campus.” Tell us about your impressions of the Constructor community.
PAS: It actually started with the university leadership and how they handled the process of my joining. The discussions were clear, transparent and very much centered on science. I had the impression that they really understood my research, thought carefully about how it fits into the university, and worked hard to make the transition smooth for me and my family. From the first day, my colleagues have been extremely welcoming and supportive, which made it easy to feel at home here, both scientifically and personally.
Lastly, I’m also very impressed by the students. Constructor has a very international and diverse student body, and the small campus creates close contact between students and faculty. It is exciting for me to bring ideas from statistical physics and complex systems into the classroom and to work with curious, motivated students.
Taken together, this made the decision quite natural: Constructor University offers a place where I can do serious long-term research, teach in a meaningful way, and help shape a developing scientific environment.
CU: Well on behalf of the entire Constructor community, let me welcome you to our faculty and wish you the very best with your endeavors Professor Saberi!
PAS: Thank you very much.
Heisenberg Professorship recipient Dr. Abbas Saberi at Constructor University
Source: Constructor University
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