May talks in the Math Coll

Our guest José M. M. Senovilla (Universidad del País Vasco) will give the Math Coll lecture Singularity theorems in Gravitation at our Faculty on May 20. Our colleague Clemens Sämann will give his inaugural lecture Curvature without differential calculus and its applications to General Relativity also in teh Math Coll on May 27.

Popular outreach, III

I gave the public science lecture Die Grenzen der Raumzeit (The Limits of Spacetime) at Vienna's Planetarium, hosted by the VHS Wien. Our research group also participated in the Lange Nacht der Forschung 2026 (Long Night of Research) with an interactive station on how mathematics helps unlock the secrets of spacetime, held at the University of Vienna's Main Building.

Marie Curie fellowships

Karim Mosani (mentors Clemens Sämann and myself) and Samuel Borca (mentor Michael Kunzinger) received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship of the EU.

Popular outreach in highschools

I gave a lecture on the infinite at AHS Wien West and delivered a Hagenmüllervorlesung Geometrie am Rande des Universums (Geometry at the edge of the universe) at GRG III.

Sabine Waschnig presents her BA-thesis

My student Sabine Waschnig (co-supervised with Leonardo Garcia Heveling) successfuly presented her BA-thesis in the B.Ed. curriculum.

Carl Rossdeutscher defends Ph.D. thesis

My student Carl Rossdeutscher (co-supervised with Walter Simon) defended his thesis "Marginally outer trapped surfaces in cosmological spacetimes: Examples and singularity theorems" and earned his Ph.D. with best marks.

Lecture at Gravity Group

I gave the lecture Synthetic Lorentzian geometry in the Gravity Seminar at the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna.

Inaugural lecture

I held my inaugural lecture A New Lorentzian Geometry as Professor of Mathematical Relativity at the Faculty's Mathematische Kolloquium.

Paul-Aaron Haberger defends master thesis

My student Paul-Aaron Haberger defended his thesis Null geometry and the Penrose incompleteness theorem and thereby finished his master studies in physics in the framework of the MCMP with distinction.

Talk at Regensburg

I gave the invited talk at the Non-smooth spacetimes and Lorentzian length spaces jointly with Clemens Sämann at CFS 2025 (New Perspectives in Mathematics and Physics), University of Regensburg, Germany.

Talk at Stony Brook

I gave the talk Generalizing the Penrose Cut-and-Paste Method: Null Shells with Pressure and Energy Flux at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics-Programme Geometry and Convergence in Mathematical General Relativity, Stony Brook, NY.

Popular outreach, II

The popular science magazine Quanta has published A New Geometry for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity an article, which tells the story of how our research group hast started working on synthetic Lorentzian geometry.

Workshop

This week we have organised the 2nd Workshop “A new geometry for Einstein’s theory of relativity and beyond” at the Maths Department in Vienna.

Popular outreach

I have been interviewed by Sebastian Deiber for UV's Research Magazine Rudolphina. Here you find his article From the Vast to the Tiny.

Matteo Calisti defends Ph.D. thesis

My student Matteo Calisti (co-supervised by Michael Kunzinger and Clemens Sämann) today defended his thesis Ricci curvature bounds and singularities in non-smooth spacetimes and earned his Ph.D. with top marks.

BIRS-IMAG worksop

I gave the invited main lecture Notions of curvature for non-smooth spacetimes at the BIRS-IMAG workshop Geometry, Analysis, and Physics in Lorentzian Signature in Granada, Spain.

Professorship

I received and accepted a call from the University of Vienna for a full professorship in Mathematical General Relativity.

Kick-off workshop

This week the first Kick-off workshop in the Emerging Fields project takes place.

• Dec: I gave the invited lecture Synthetic curvature for GR and beyond at the EPS Conference on Gravitation: Unlocking Gravity Through Computation at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
• Nov: My collaborator Sonja Kramer was awarded the UNIVIE Teaching Award for our joint lecture and exercise classes "Schulmathematik Analysis" (school mathematics analysis).
• Oct: My student Argam Ohanyan defended his Ph.D. thesis entiteled Singularities and rigidity in smooth and non-smooth spacetimes with flying colours and shortly after received an Erwin Schrödinger grant by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. His project Singularities and rigidity in non-smooth spacetimes is mentored by Robert McCann in Toronto.
• Oct: The Emerging Fields Project A new Geoemtry for Einstein's theory of Relativity and beyond officially starts.
• Sept: I gave an invited talk at the Time Machine Factory conference and a contributed talk at the International Conference on Generalized Functions GF2024, both in Turin, Italy.
• Sept: I gave the invited talk The Hawking theorem in Lipschitz regularity at Queen Mary University of London, U.K.
• April: The University of Vienna funds the Faculty's teaching project MaThX (Mathematikunterricht zwischen Theorie und Praxis; Teaching mathematics beteen theory and pratice), where I am a co-organiser.
• April: Together with Ilse Fischer I gave a talk at the Austrian Mathematical Society's Teacher Training Day entiteled Neue Mathematik für die Schule (New Maths for School).

A new geometry for Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Beyond

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has announced to fund the project A new geometry for Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Beyond in its new Emerging Fields excellency programme. The funding sum is an unprecedented 7 Million Euro. The project team consist of Michael Kunzinger , Raquel Perales , Chiara Rigoni , Clemens Sämann , and myself .
See the press releases of FWF , the University of Vienna and the Faculty of Mathematics.

• Sept: Together with Ilse Fischer I gave an invited lecture at the Teacher's Day of the Austrian Mathematical Society.
• June: Clemens Sämann, graduate from our research group and my frequent co-author was arwarded the START-prize of the Austrian Science fund.
• I served in the scientific board of GeLoMer the XI International Meeting on Lorentzian Geometry, held in Merida, Mexico, Jan. 29--Feb. 2, 2024.
• April: I gave the popular talk "Von Schwarzen Löchern und dem Urknall" (On black holes and the big bang) explaining some of my recent research at Vienna Planetarium.
• April: I gave an invited main lecture entiteled Impulsive gravitational waves (From particle motion to geometry) at the HASOP2023 conference in Novi Sad, Serbia.
• March: The ESI hosted our workshop Non-regular Spacetime Geometry , co-organised with Piotr Chrusciel, Melanie Graf, Ettore Minguzzi, and Mike Kunzinger.
• Feb: The Topical Collection "Singularity theorems, causality, and all that (SCRI21)" , which I was co-editing appeared in General Relativity and Gravitation.

• Sept: Our research group organized the International Conference on Generalized Functions GF2022 at our Faculty in Vienna.
• July: My student Benedict Schinnerl defended his Ph.D. thesis with best marks
• June: My Ph.D. student Argam Ohanyan received a DOC-grant from the Austrian Academy of Science. He also successfully defended his master thesis in Pysics.
• April: I gave the invited main talk Raumzeitsingularitäten: Die Theoreme von Penrose und Hawking (Spacetime singularities: The theorems of Penrose and Hawking) at the ÖMG-Fortbildungstagung für Lehrhräfte (Teacher Training Day of the Austrian Mathematical Society).

Solidarity with Ukraine

The University of Vienna stands with Ukraine and condemns the attack on the country.

• Sept: The project application Marginally outer trapped tubes of Walter Simon, where I am a co-applicant was selected for funding by FWF.
• July: I have coorganized the small 2021 Null Distance Workshop with Cristina Sormani.
• June: I have coorganized the online-meeting SCRI21: Singularity theorems, causality, and all that (A tribute to Roger Penrose) with Piotr Chrusciel, Melanie Graf, Ettore Minguzzi, and Mike Kunzinger.
• March: The talks of the 10th International Meeting on Lorentzian Geometry GeLoCor , where I was a member of the scientific commitee are now available on a Youtube channel
• Feb: My FWF-funded research project Non-smooth spacetime geometry has started with two Ph.D. students employed, Matteo Calisti and Felix Rott.

• My project application Non-smooth spacetime geometry was selected for funding by FWF.
• My Ph.D. student Benedict Schinnerl was awarded a Uni:Docs scholarship .

• I gave a public lecture "Raumzeitsingularitäten" (spacetime singularities) at Plaentarium Wien.
• Jiri Podolsky , a theoretical physicist from Charles University at Prague (and a frequent collaborator of mine) has written a background story on his research for CQG+. It is entiteled Understanding exact space-times and also briefly describes our joint project(s).

The 3rd edition of our textbook with Hermann Schichl Einführung in das mathematische Arbeiten (German; Introduction into mathematical methodology) has appeared.