Discrete Laplacians 2026

22 Jun 2026, 07:10 → 25 Jun 2026, 17:00 Europe/Berlin

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics

Discrete Laplacians 2026

Discrete Laplacians appear broadly throughout mathematics and the applied sciences. They are a key concept in connecting continuous methods and theories to their discrete analogues, and underlie many of the modern tools in applied mathematics, data analysis, with numerous applications in biology, physics, social sciences and other disciplines.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from a variety of subjects to present and discuss recent advances in the theory and use of discrete Laplacians. The workshop will focus on discrete Laplacians arising in graph theory, topology, probability, numerics, and data science & machine learning.

Abstract deadline: [abstract submission closed]
Registration deadline: 17 May, 2026

Location: MPI-CBG, Dresden, Germany

Dates: 22 - 25 June 2026

Organisers: Karel Devriendt, Otto Sumray, Yu Tian, Giulio Zucal

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Aida Abiad - TU Eindhoven, NL
• Francesca Arrigo - University of Strathclyde, UK
• Sebastian Engelke - University of Geneva, CH
• Kaibo Hu - University of Oxford, UK
• Jürgen Jost - MPI MiS, Leipzig, DE
• Adrien Kassel - ENS Lyon, FR
• Facundo Mémoli - Rutgers University, US
• Michael Schaub - RWTH Aachen, DE
• Melanie Weber - Harvard University, US

 

The preliminary timetable can be seen here.

NB: some of our speakers have received an email from gtravelexpertise.com regarding travel plans.
This is a scam/phishing email, please check with our organising team if you have any suspicions about any further emails. We will never ask for you to send money.

Monday 22 June

08:30 → 09:15 Welcome & registration

09:15 → 09:30 Opening

Speaker: Heather Harrington (CSBD)

09:30 → 10:30 Keynote

09:30 TBD (Mémoli)

Speaker: Facundo Mémoli (Rutgers University)

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 12:00 Contributed

11:00 Neural Feature Geometry Evolves as Discrete Ricci Flow

Speaker: Max-Konstantin von Renesse (Univ. Leipzig)

11:30 Effective Resistance in Simplicial Complexes: Generalizations and Properties

Speaker: Claudia Landi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)

12:00 → 12:20 Coffee

12:20 → 13:20 Keynote

12:20 TBD (Schaub)

Speaker: Michael Schaub (RWTH Aachen)

13:20 → 14:40 Lunch

14:40 → 15:40 Keynote

14:40 TBD (Weber) [Online]

Speaker: Melanie Weber (Harvard University)

15:40 → 16:00 Short break

16:00 → 16:50 Contributed

16:00 Generalized Persistent Laplacians and Their Spectral Properties

Speaker: Arne Wolf (Imperial College London)

16:25 Clearing for Persistent Laplacians and Beyond

Speaker: Rui Dong (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Tuesday 23 June

08:30 → 09:30 Welcome & registration

09:30 → 10:30 Keynote

09:30 TBD (Hu)

Speaker: Kaibo Hu (University of Oxford)

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 12:00 Contributed

11:00 Discrete Approximation of Differential Forms on Sampled Vietoris-Rips Complexes

Speaker: Darrick Lee (University of Edinburgh)

11:30 The Discrete Laplacian from Polyhedral Meshes to Graphs

Speaker: Jooyoung Hahn (Czech Technical University in Prague)

12:00 → 12:20 Coffee

12:20 → 13:10 Contributed

12:20 Regularization for the inverse conductance problem on networks

Speaker: Álvaro Samperio (CUNEF Universidad)

12:45 measure-theoretic method for computing Ricci flow on point clouds

Speaker: Dongwoo Gang (Seoul National University)

13:10 → 14:40 Lunch

14:40 → 15:40 Keynote

14:40 TBD (Jost)

Speaker: Jürgen Jost (MPI MiS Leipzig)

15:40 → 16:00 Short break

16:00 → 16:50 Contributed

16:00 Point-Level Topological Representation Learning at the Intersection of Topology and Geometry using the Hodge Laplacian

Speaker: Vincent Grande (RWTH Aachen University)

16:25 Discrete approximation of the Laplacian on a covering manifold

Speaker: Erik Babuschkin (Universität Göttingen)

Wednesday 24 June

08:30 → 09:30 Welcome & registration

09:30 → 10:30 Keynote

09:30 TBD (Abiad)

Speaker: Aida Abiad (TU Eindhoven)

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 12:00 Contributed

11:00 Diameter, Algebraic Connectivity, and Maximum Relaxation Time in Regular Graphs

Speaker: Ebrahim Ghorbani (Hamburg University of Technology, Institute for Algorithms and Complexity)

11:30 A Ricci flow for resistance curvature

Speaker: Mark Kempton (Brigham Young University)

12:00 → 12:20 Coffee

12:20 → 13:10 Contributed

12:20 How To Control Smoothing in Graph Neural Networks

Speaker: Bastian Epping (RWTH Aachen University)

12:45 Affine-Invariant Geometry of Laplacians for Fast Graph Comparison

Speaker: Boris Stupovski (Institute of Physics Belgrade)

13:10 → 14:40 Lunch

14:40 → 15:40 Keynote

14:40 TBD (Arrigo)

Speaker: Francesca Arrigo (University of Strathclyde)

15:40 → 16:00 Short break

16:00 → 16:50 Contributed

16:00 Experimental methods for the automatic estimation of real cohomology

Speaker: Antonio Rieser (SECIHTI-CIMAT)

16:25 Gremban Expansion for Signed Networks: Algebraic and Combinatorial Foundations for Community-Faction Detection

Speaker: Fernando Fernando (University Carlos III of Madrid)

18:30 → 20:30 Workshop dinner

Thursday 25 June

08:35 → 09:30 Welcome & registration

09:30 → 10:30 Keynote

09:30 TBD (Kassel)

Speaker: Adrien Kassel (ENS Lyon)

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 12:00 Contributed

11:00 Martingales and Asymptotic Phase

Speaker: Yuliy Baryshnikov (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign)

11:30 Graph limits and their connections to the discrete Laplacian

Speaker: Ágnes Backhausz (Eötvös Loránd University & HUN-REN Rényi Institute)

12:00 → 12:20 Coffee

12:20 → 13:10 Contributed

12:20 TBD

Speaker: Paweł Korzeb (MPI PKS)

12:45 Simplicial effective resistance and enumeration of spanning trees

Speaker: Kang-Ju Lee (Seoul National University)

13:10 → 14:40 Lunch

14:40 → 15:40 Keynote

14:40 TBD (Engelke)

Speaker: Sebastian Engelke (University of Geneva)

15:40 → 16:00 Short break

16:00 → 16:50 Contributed

16:00 Extremal conditional independence for Hüsler-Reiss distributions via modular functions

Speaker: Ignacio Echave-Sustaeta Rodríguez (Eindhoven University of Technology)

16:25 Topology of Discrete Laplacian in Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics: From Trees to Forests

Speaker: Shiling Liang (MPI-PKS)