Florian Block Student in Mathematics Concerning TopMath:
I am a fourth-year Ph.D. Student in Mathematics at the University of Michigan . My
advisor is Sergey
Fomin . I am also a Ph.D. TopMath -Fellow
at TU Munich. Before that I biked from
Germany to Nepal in five months. Before that I worked with Eva-Maria
Feichtner at the University
of Stuttgart and at the ETH
in Zuerich. Before that I finished up with my Diploma at the Technical University of Munich after four years working with Juergen Richter-Gebert . From August 2004 to May 2005 I spent two semesters studying at UC Berkeley supervised by Bernd Sturmfels and supported by a DAAD grant.
I am interested in problems that involve (at best) Combinatorics, Algebra,
and Geometry, for example, the application of commutative algebra methods to the discrete, combinatorial problem of the computation of tropical polytopes .
Since Fall 2007 I've been (co-)organizing the Graduate Student
Combinatorics Seminar at the University of Michigan.
This semester I am at MSRI for the tropical geometry
program where I am co-organizing the What-is-Seminar.
Papers
Other stuff
Ranks and Orbits of 2x2x2 Matrices
Two languages of Schubert Calculus: Grassmannians and Flag Manifolds
Research Talks
Oriented Matroids, Bergman Complexes, and Nested Sets
Student Combinatorics Seminar, University of Michigan, USA, January 2007
TopMath Seminar, University of Munich, Germany, December 2006
Tropical Convexity via Cellular Resolutions
Discrete Geometry Seminar, Technical University of Berlin, Germany, February 2006
Geometry Seminar, University of Stuttgart, Germany, January 2006
TopMath , TU Munich, Germany, August 2005
Siemens AG, Munich, Germany, July 2005
Mittagsseminar (Noon-Seminar), ETH Zürich, Switzerland, July 2005
(with Josephine Yu), UC Berkeley Combinatorial Commutative Algebra Course, USA, December 2004
Second-Order-Approximation in Robust Optimization , Siemens AG, Munich, June 2004
Conferences & Summer Schools
Formal Power Series & Algebraic Combinatorics , RISC,
Austria, July 20 - 24, 2009. Saturday in Discrete Mathematics ,University of Erlangen, Germany, July 18, 2009. Clifford
Lecture Series: Tropical Algebra ,University of Tulane, USA,
November 12 - 15, 2008. Summer School: Analytic
and Algebraic Geometry: Common Problems, Different Methods , PCMI, Park City, USA, July 6 -
26, 2008. Summer School: Applicable Algebraic Geometry , Texas A&M, USA, July 22 - October 10, 2007. Graduate Student Topology Conference , University of Chicago, USA, April 21-22, 2005. Graduate Student Geometry/Topology Conference , Michigan State, USA, March 31, 2007. A Saturday on Discrete Mathematics , University of Darmstadt, Germany, November 26, 2005. Summer School: Formal Models of Psychological Processes , St. Johann, Italy, August 28 - Septemeber 10, 2005 Joint Mathematics Meetings , Atlanta, USA, January 5-8, 2005 Phylogenetic Combinatorics and Applications , Uppsala, Sweden, July 5-9, 2004 Ferienakademie : Mathematical Aspects of Quantum Algorithms and Quantum Information Theory , Sarntal, Italy, September 9 - August 3, 2003
Teaching
Work Experience
Internship at Siemens AG , Corporate Technology Division, Müchen, February 16-March 26, 2004
Internship at BASF AG , Physical Chemistry & Informatics Division, Ludwigshafen, July 16-August 31, 2001
Academic Honors
Luther Claborn Mathematics Fellow (Summer 2009)
Rackham International Fellowship, November 2007
Diploma with Distinction, November 2005
TopMath -Fellow at TU Munich, since October 2005 (
German Academic Exchange Service Fellowship [DAAD ], September 2004 - May 2005
German National Academic Foundation Fellowship [Studienstiftung ], March 2004 - December 2005
e-fellows Fellowship, since November 2003
Prediploma with Distinction, December 2003
Distinction for excellent high school performance in Mathematics and Computer Science, June 2001
