Research

My research centres on how to understand complex data sets, mostly in biomedical contexts, using (among other things) topological machine learning methods. I consider myself to be a toolsmith, creating new tools that help us deal with challenging problems.

If you are interested in topological machine learning, consider joining TDA in ML, a Slack community dedicated to discussing all things topological machine learning.

Publications

Please find a list of my preprints and publications below. Equal contributions by several authors are indicated using a superscript dagger symbol, i.e. . A superscript ‘double dagger’, or diesis, i.e. , denotes a publication that was jointly directed. I aim to provide a BibTeX file for citing the publication as well as the slides corresponding to the paper. If neither a preprint nor slides are available but you still want to read the publication, please drop me a line to bastian@rieck.me—it is possible that I am only allowed to share a publication privately.

Preprints

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

Notes

Here are some notes on various topics. These notes are not peer-reviewed, though, and may contain errors—please notify me if you find some.

Research interests

Our world is full of complex phenomena that happen at different temporal or spatial scales. I am interested in developing methods and techniques that help us understand these phenomena, especially in the presence of noisy or time-varying measurements.

Broadly speaking, this means that I have a penchant for developing new topological machine learning techniques, i.e. algorithms that are ‘aware’ of the fundamental topological properties of a data set. If you are familiar with machine learning terminology, this translates to developing new inductive biases and new architectures.

(I also have a general interest in algebraic & differential topology—both fields contain a wealth of potentially useful tools for visualisation and machine learning!)

Since ’theory without practice is empty,’ I also aim to build bridges to applications, in particular those that arise in the life sciences or healthcare in general. These domains are a source of complex data sets and challenges, and solutions to these challenges promise to have a profound, positive impact on society. As a mathematician-turned-computer-scientist-turned-something-else, this sparks immense joy and gratitude!

I am fortunate to work with many outstanding human beings, some of which also have personal websites: