Discrete Laplacians 2026

Jun 22, 2026, 7:10 AM → Jun 25, 2026, 5:00 PM 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.

Mon, June 22

8:30 AM Welcome & registration

1 Opening

Speaker: Heather Harrington (CSBD)

Keynote

2 TBD (Mémoli)

Speaker: Facundo Mémoli (Rutgers University)

10:30 AM Coffee

Contributed

3 Neural Feature Geometry Evolves as Discrete Ricci Flow

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

4 Effective Resistance in Simplicial Complexes: Generalizations and Properties

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

11:50 AM Coffee

Keynote

5 TBD (Schaub)

Speaker: Michael Schaub (RWTH Aachen)

1:10 PM Lunch

Keynote

6 TBD (Weber) [Online]

Speaker: Melanie Weber (Harvard University)

3:40 PM Short break

Contributed

7 Generalized Persistent Laplacians and Their Spectral Properties

Speaker: Arne Wolf (Imperial College London)

8 Clearing for Persistent Laplacians and Beyond

Speaker: Rui Dong (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Tue, June 23

8:30 AM Welcome & registration

Keynote

9 TBD (Hu)

Speaker: Kaibo Hu (University of Oxford)

10:30 AM Coffee

Contributed

10 Discrete Approximation of Differential Forms on Sampled Vietoris-Rips Complexes

Speaker: Darrick Lee (University of Edinburgh)

11 The Discrete Laplacian from Polyhedral Meshes to Graphs

Speaker: Jooyoung Hahn (Czech Technical University in Prague)

11:50 AM Coffee

Contributed

12 Regularization for the inverse conductance problem on networks

Speaker: Álvaro Samperio (CUNEF Universidad)

13 measure-theoretic method for computing Ricci flow on point clouds

Speaker: Dongwoo Gang (Seoul National University)

1:10 PM Lunch

Keynote

14 TBD (Jost)

Speaker: Jürgen Jost (MPI MiS Leipzig)

3:40 PM Short break

Contributed

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

Speaker: Vincent Grande (RWTH Aachen University)

16 Discrete approximation of the Laplacian on a covering manifold

Speaker: Erik Babuschkin (Universität Göttingen)

Wed, June 24

8:30 AM Welcome & registration

Keynote

17 TBD (Abiad)

Speaker: Aida Abiad (TU Eindhoven)

10:30 AM Coffee

Contributed

18 Diameter, Algebraic Connectivity, and Maximum Relaxation Time in Regular Graphs

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

19 A Ricci flow for resistance curvature

Speaker: Mark Kempton (Brigham Young University)

11:50 AM Coffee

Contributed

20 How To Control Smoothing in Graph Neural Networks

Speaker: Bastian Epping (RWTH Aachen University)

21 Affine-Invariant Geometry of Laplacians for Fast Graph Comparison

Speaker: Boris Stupovski (Institute of Physics Belgrade)

1:10 PM Lunch

Keynote

22 TBD (Arrigo)

Speaker: Francesca Arrigo (University of Strathclyde)

3:40 PM Short break

Contributed

23 Experimental methods for the automatic estimation of real cohomology

Speaker: Antonio Rieser (SECIHTI-CIMAT)

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

Speaker: Fernando Fernando (University Carlos III of Madrid)

6:30 PM Workshop dinner

Thu, June 25

8:35 AM Welcome & registration

Keynote

25 TBD (Kassel)

Speaker: Adrien Kassel (ENS Lyon)

10:30 AM Coffee

Contributed

26 Martingales and Asymptotic Phase

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

27 Graph limits and their connections to the discrete Laplacian

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

11:50 AM Coffee

Contributed

28 TBD

Speaker: Paweł Korzeb (MPI PKS)

29 Simplicial effective resistance and enumeration of spanning trees

Speaker: Kang-Ju Lee (Seoul National University)

1:10 PM Lunch

Keynote

30 TBD (Engelke)

Speaker: Sebastian Engelke (University of Geneva)

3:40 PM Short break

Contributed

31 Extremal conditional independence for Hüsler-Reiss distributions via modular functions

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

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

Speaker: Shiling Liang (MPI-PKS)