Oberwolfach Seminars
The Oberwolfach Seminars are organized by leading experts in the field, and address excellent and promising Ph.D. students and postdocs from all over the world. The aim is to introduce the participants to a particular hot development. We are pleased that the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation has decided to support the Oberwolfach Seminars from summer 2008 to 2025.
Upcoming Seminars
For information on upcoming seminars, please visit our annual schedule or view the poster. The seminar program for the coming year is usually announced in early December. For each seminar we will provide an individual website with more details on the mathematical content and the course of the seminar, as well as on prerequisites, references and basic literature, if applicable. Please navigate to the seminar of your interest via the annual schedule.
>> Open annual schedule (new window)...
General Course of the Seminars
The Seminars run from Sunday to Friday with arrival on Sunday afternoon and departure on Friday afternoon (cf. information for invited researchers). On Sunday evening after dinner organizers and participants traditionally meet in order to introduce themselves informally. Every participant should present his/her interests to the others for some minutes.
Traditionally, the seminar talks of the organizers are in the morning (two lectures of about 1,5 hours or three of about one hour). After lunch there is an essential break offering the possibility to work on the given lectures. In the afternoon there should be no further seminar talks, but workshop sessions to give the participants the opportunity to deepen their knowledge by asking questions and discussing examples concerning the material/matter dealt with in the lectures. If possible there should be no lecture in the evening and talks of participants should be restricted to exceptional cases.
Participation in the Seminar
Ph.D. students and postdocs, having received their Ph.D. not more than 10 years ago, are invited to apply. The number of participants for each seminar is restricted to 24, including organizers. Applications including title, ID and date of the intended seminar, together with one pdf-file attached containing
- your full name, email, and university/institute address
- short CV and publication list
- present position, university
- name of supervisor of Ph. D. thesis
- a short summary of previous work and interest
should be sent by e-mail prior to the deadline to:
Prof. Dr. Matthias Hieber
Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
Schwarzwaldstr. 9-11
77709 Oberwolfach-Walke
Germany
Upon approvement of application, the participants of Oberwolfach Seminars are invited personally by the Director of the Institute. Participation is subject to such an invitation. The Institute covers accommodation and food. Arrival is on Sunday afternoon. By the support of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, travel expenses can be reimbursed up to 150 Euro in average per person. Travel reimbursement can be paid upon application to the guest office during the stay at Oberwolfach after having checked eligibility (please present the original tickets).
Further information in preparation of the stay and in particular about travel arrangements and the free taxi transfer from Hausach train station to the Institute can be found in our information for invited researchers.
Book Series on Oberwolfach Seminars
In order to make the Oberwolfach Seminars available to an even larger audience, the MFO supports the publication within the book series Oberwolfach Seminars, published in the Birkhäuser program of Springer Basel. We should like to express our sincere thanks for the combined efforts of the organizers to publish these Lecture notes. The organizers as well as the participants receive free copies of the respective Volume. Moreover, a copy of every volume will be exhibited in the library of the MFO.
Call for Proposals
Who Can Propose and Until When?
In addition to proposals from the Scientific Committee and Advisory Board of the MFO, the institute invites proposals for Oberwolfach Seminars from the whole mathematical community. Proposals from prospective organizers for an Oberwolfach Seminar in the following year are collected until end of July (deadline). The scientific committee then evaluates the proposals and decides on the Oberwolfach Seminar program in its October meeting.
General Requirements for a Proposal
A proposal (typically 1-3 pages in English) should include
- the title of the seminar,
- proposed organizers (2-4 persons, please note that 5 or more organizers are not allowed),
- a short proposal (1-2 pages) explaining why the topic should be realized as an Oberwolfach Seminar now (new developments, thematical focus of the planned lectures)
- a short abstract (about 5 lines/500 characters) describing the content for a poster, to be published on our website in case of an approval
- a program of 2-5 pages, to be published on our website in case of an approval
- the scheduling options (see below)
The program will inform the applicants/participants (graduate students) on more details concerning the mathematical content, prerequisites, references and basic literature in order to prepare themselves for the seminar.
Please provide full addresses and email addresses for all organizers; in case of early career researchers it is recommended to add a cv with publication list. In line with the MFO’s policy to increasing the number of female participants, proposals that include at least one female organizer are strongly encouraged.
Scheduling Options
Please indicate which of the three traditional weeks of the prospective seminar would be possible for you. Every year, the seminars take place
- in the week over Pentecost,
- in the middle of October
- and in the Thanksgiving week (i.e., the week which contains the fourth Thursday of November).
The exact dates of the reserved weeks can be found in the schedule of the seminars. The seminar weeks of the year after next are usually announced at the beginning of December. Please note that by reasons of capacity, it is not always possible to find an optimal date within the three reserved weeks. Sometimes a seminar has to be postponed to the following year.
Optional Publication of Lecture Notes
The MFO supports the publication of the content of the seminars in its book series Oberwolfach Seminars in collaboration with Birkhäuser/Springer Nature. If you are interested in a publication, please inform us in your proposal.
How to Submit
Please send the proposal as a pdf-attachment via email to the vice director of the MFO via seminar-proposals@mfo.de clearly indicating that it is a proposal for an Oberwolfach Seminar, not for an Oberwolfach Workshop.
In Case of Approval
The Seminar program is decided each year in October. In case that your proposal will be approved, we will contact you in due time and inform you on the date and on the following steps. In particular, we will create a poster (using the short abstract in your proposal) and a website for your seminar where we will publish the poster and the program from your proposal. In our half-annual newsletter (scheduled for January and July), we advertise for the Oberwolfach Seminars. Please advertise in parallel via own channels in your community, making free use of website, poster and program of your seminar.
There will be a modest honorarium for the organizers to acknowledge the efforts to prepare the lectures.