Doctoral student Danai Deligeorgaki from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, will join the groups of Aida Maraj, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) and the Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD), and Heather Harrington, director at the MPI-CBG and CSBD. Danai will receive her doctoral degree in mathematics in 2025 and continue her research thanks to a grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation as a postoc at the MPI-CBG.
Before joining the MPI-CBG, Danai will spend one year at the University of Barcelona, Spain, in a research postdoc position funded by Combinatorial Polytope Theory, a joint project between Germany and Spain. During this time, she will regularly visit her colleagues at the MPI-CBG before moving to Dresden in 2026.
The funding for Danai, who received it together with 15 other mathematicians, is part of the Mathematics Program of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. This program is a collaboration between the the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, which provides the funding, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which evaluates the candidates. Eight young Swedish mathematicians, among them Danai Deligeorgaki, will have the opportunity to travel abroad to start a postdoctoral position, while five researchers and three visiting professors from abroad will be recruited to Swedish universities.
“I am very excited about the opportunity to continue my research at the MPI-CBG, and I am thankful to Aida Maraj and Heather Harrington, who have supported me during the application process,” says Danai Deligeorgaki.
The main focus of Danai’s research project is the combinatorics of statistical models that capture relationships between discrete random variables and have applications to algebraic statistics. A simple example examines whether the decision to return a product depends on whether it was bought online or in a physical store based on observed data. The combinatorics of the statistical model can then be used to calculate the probability that the data comes from the model. If this probability is small, it suggests that the model does not adequately explain the data.
These hypothesis tests are considerably more complicated with a greater number of variables, leading to many more contingency tables. This requires the development of advanced statistical models for probability distributions, which utilize methods from algebra, combinatorics, and geometry. Some of the statistical models’ properties will be studied by examining the symmetries of geometric objects, polytopes, which are high-dimensional polygons.
Innovative statistical models will contribute to the development of more efficient methods for analyzing and understanding complex data sets. There are countless applications, ranging from biology and medicine to data processing at large internet companies as well as mathematical phylogenetics, which is one of the areas of interest of Heather Harrington and Aida Maraj at the MPI-CBG.
About the program
Over the years 2014–2030, the program provides SEK 650 million to allow Swedish researchers to receive international postdoctoral positions, as well as the international recruitment of visiting professors and of foreign researchers to postdoctoral positions at Swedish universities. The program also includes funding worth SEK 73 million for the Academy of Sciences’ Institut Mittag-Leffler, one of the world’s ten leading mathematics institutions. Including this year’s grants, 168 researchers have received funding since 2014.
Releated links:
https://kaw.wallenberg.org/en/press/sixteen-mathematicians-share-sek-35-million-research-funding
https://kaw.wallenberg.org/en/danai-deligeorgaki
https://danaideligeorgaki.wordpress.com/