The team consists currently of 5 Principal Investigators (see below).
The first Ph.D. students and PostDocs have joined the team in autumn 2024.
Principal Investigators
Michael Kunzinger
Research interests: Low regularity and synthetic Differential Geometry, Lorentzian Geometry, General Relativity (singularity theorems, low regularity spacetimes), Generalized Functions, Partial Differential Equations.
Raquel Perales
Research interests: Geometric Analysis and Riemannian Geometry; in particular, RCD\((K,N)\) spaces, Ricci, integral Ricci and scalar curvature lower bounds, Geometric Flows, Yamabe-type problems, and General Relativity.
Chiara Rigoni
Research interests: Optimal transport, Riemannian geometry, analysis and geometry on metric measure spaces, synthetic curvature-dimension condition, Dirichlet spaces, Gradient flow theory.
Clemens Sämann
Research interests: Lorentzian geometry, Mathematical General Relativity, in particular low regularity and synthetic approaches to General Relativity; metric (measure) geometry; Optimal Transport.
Roland Steinbauer (coordinator)
Roland Steinbauer is an Associated Professor at the University of Vienna’s Faculty of Mathematics since 2003. His main fields of research are Mathematical General Relativity (causality theory, cosmic censorship, exact radiative solutions), Low regularity (Lorentzian) Differential Geometry, and (Non-linear) Generalized Functions. In addition he has developed a strong interest in Mathematics Education Research.
PostDocs
Karim Mosani
Karim Mosani is a mathematical physicist mainly interested in problems related to black holes and singularities. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Mumbai before obtaining a Ph.D. from BITS Pilani-Goa in 2022. For his doctoral research, Karim studied gravitational collapse and the formation of spacetime singularities that are naked and are associated with the blow-up of curvature scalars. Later, he moved to Tuebingen University and then to Ruhr University Bochum, where he worked on understanding trapped photon regions in black hole spacetimes. He is now trying to understand the extension of well-known results in general relativity to Lorentzian metrics of low regularity and Lorentzian (pre-)length space.
Associated Ph.D.-students (financed by VSM and other projects)
Sebastian Gieger
Sebastian Gieger studied Mathematics at the University of Vienna and finished his Master’s degree in 2024. His Master thesis was about area and volume comparison on Lorentzian manifolds, while his Ph.D. project is concerned with foundational topics in Metric Geometry and their counterparts in Lorentzian Length Spaces.
Luca Mrini
Luca Mrini studied at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and graduated with an MSc from the Perimeter Scholars International program in Spring 2024. His primary interest in physics is quantum gravity, the structure of its possible theoretical frameworks, and its observable consequences. Luca pursued this interest in his Master’s essay by studying indefinite causal structure in time-symmetric theories. He is now researching applications of synthetic Lorentzian geometry to quantum gravity for his Ph.D. in the Emerging Fields project.
This page is still under construction.
