Nina Otter

CAM Adjunct Assistant Professor

Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555

Office: MS 7380

News Preprints and recent publications Talks Upcoming travel Teaching Writing

Hi! I am Nina.

I am an executive manager for Compositionality, a new open-access journal publishing research in the mathematics of composition.

I run a local TDA seminar at UCLA. Here is my CV.

You can contact me at otter at math dot ucla dot edu.

News

In October 2020 I gave a lecture series at the Heidelberg Physics Graduate Days.

In July 2020 I was one of the four mentors for the Applied Category Theory 2020 Adjoint School.

The first volume of Compositionality was published in December 2019! You can find the papers here.

I organised a minisymposium on Algebraic Geometry in Topological Data Analysis at the SIAM Conference on Applied Algebraic Geometry, in Bern on 9 – 13 July 2019.

From July 2018 to December 2018 I was a postdoc in the Nonlinear Algebra Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig.

On 7 May 2018 I successfully defended my DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford.

Conference papers

Weisfeiler and Lehman Go Topological: Message Passing Simplicial Networks, joint with Cristian Bodnar, Fabrizio Frasca, Yu Guang Wang, Guido Montufar, Pietro Lio, Michael Bronstein, Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2021)

Can neural networks learn persistent homology features?, joint with Guido Montufar, Yu Guang Wang, Topological Data Analysis and Beyond Workshop at the 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020), Vancouver, Canada

Publications

Stratifying multiparameter persistent homology (joint with H. Schenck, H. Harrington, U. Tillmann), SIAM Journal on Applied Algebraic Geometry, 3(3):439-471 (2019).

A roadmap for the computation of persistent homology (joint with M. Porter, U. Tillmann, P. Grindrod, H. Harrington), EPJ Data Science 2017 6:17 (2017). A combined pdf of the paper and the supplementary material is here.
All processed data sets used in the benchmarking, as well as scripts used to measure memory, all scripts written for the tutorial, and an updated list of libraries for PH can be found here.

Operads and phylogenetic trees (joint with J. Baez), Theory and Applications of Categories, 33(40):1397-1453 (2017).

Preprints

A topological perspective on regimes in dynamical systems, joint with Kristian Strommen, Matthew Chantry, Joshua Dorrington, 2021

A unified framework for equivalences in social networks, joint with Mason Porter, 2020

Magnitude meets persistence. Homology theories for filtered simplicial sets, 2018

Slides or videos from talks

The persistent homology of data, Oberseminar Geometrie, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, 17 July 2018

Stratifying multiparameter persistent homology, TDA seminar, CIMAT, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1 September 2017.

New invariants for multiparameter persistent homology, at the Applied Algebraic Topology 2017 conference, Sapporo, Japan, 9 August 2017.

Stratifying multiparameter persistent homology, at the workshop Topological Data Analysis: Developing Abstract Foundations, BIRS, Canada, 2 August 2017. A video of the talk is available here.

The phylogenetic operad, at the Barcelona Mathematical Days, Barcelona, 27 April 2017.

Multiparameter persistent homology: applications and algorithms, at the GUDHI/Top Data Workshop, Porquerolles, France, 18 October 2016.

Operads and phylogenetic trees at the Computational and Applied Algebra minisymposium, British Applied Mathematics Colloquium, Oxford, 6 April 2016.

A roadmap for the computation of persistent homology at the 2nd School and Conference on Topological Data Analysis, Queretaro, Mexico, 11 December 2015.

The phylogenetic operad at the SISU Math Research Seminar, San Jose State University, 9 November 2015.

The phylogenetic operad at the Applied Algebra Minisymposium, UC Berkeley, 4 November 2015.

Software for persistent homology: overview and demonstration at the CAT Research School and ATI scoping workshop in Oxford, 11 September 2015. The scripts for the exercises given during the talk can be found here (latest upload 14 September).

Operads and phylogenetic trees at the YTM in Lausanne, 9 July 2015.

A roadmap for the computation of persistent homology at the AAT research network meeting in Aberdeen, 8 June 2015.

Upcoming (virtual) travel

Well, I am not really going anywhere, and neither should you! I will be delivering lectures remotely at the following venues:

7 May 2021, Panel discussion Beyond TDA 2.0, Geometrical and Topological Representation Learning workshop, ICLR 2021

28 May 2021, Data Science Seminar, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

16 June 2021, Groupe de travail ATD, Montpellier

18 August 2021, minisymposium on Sheaves and Homotopical Methods for Topological Data Analysis, at the SIAM conference on Applied Algebraic Geometry, Texas, US

Teaching

Spring 2021: Math 121 Introdution to Topology

Fall 2020: Math 61 Introdution to Discrete Structures

Winter 2020: Math 168 Introdution to Networks

Fall 2019: Math 33a Linear Algebra and Applications

Spring 2019: Math 168 Introdution to Networks

Winter 2019 Math 184 Enumerative Combinatorics

In Hilary (January–March) 2018 I was the class tutor for Computational Algebraic Topology in Oxford.

In Michaelmas (October–December) 2017 I was the class tutor for Algebraic Topology.

In Hilary and Trinity Term (January–June) 2017 I was tutoring Topology at New College and St Hugh's College.

In Hilary (January–March) 2017 I was the class tutor for Computational Algebraic Topology. I also gave a tutorial on Category Theory for the Stanford in Oxford programme.

In Michaelmas (October–December) 2016 I was TAing Topology and Groups and Homological Algebra. I also gave a tutorial on Abstract Algebra for the Stanford University in Oxford programme.

In Hilary and Trinity Term (January–June) 2016 I was the tutor for Topology at New College.

In Trinity Term (April–June) 2015 I organised a reading course on applications of sheaves and cosheaves, based in part on Justin Curry's PhD thesis.

Writing

here

In general, TeX usage is pretty much like being a guest at somebody else's house. There are zillions of stuff that you have absolutely no idea what they are about. So don't fiddle too much. Just enjoy your stay and get out as soon as possible.

Some theses:

Stacks from scratch, Semester Thesis, ETH Zuerich

The Boardman-Vogt resolution and tropical moduli spaces, Master Thesis, ETH Zuerich

The geometric group law on a tropical elliptic curve, Bachelor Thesis, ETH Zuerich