HLF Review 2016

Participants
On a Single Piece of Paper
Ben Orlin (member of the 4th HLF Blog Team)
One of the hardest things about research in
technical fields: Explaining what the heck it is
that you do.
The natural sciences have it easy: they study
physical, tangible things. Perhaps those things
are weird and exotic (bosons, mRNA, kangaroos,
etc.) but hey, at least they’re things.
Here’s some poetic algebra for you: each vector
space is like a flourishing leaf, and linear maps
are the rough bark that runs between them. As
a researcher, Tetiana wants to understand the
whole tree.
From Opeyemi Aborisade, studying cryptography
in Senegal:
Mathematicians and computer scientists face
a taller order. They study concepts, processes,
algorithms. The “things” they research aren’t
really things at all: they’re creations of rigorous
human thought, abstract structures of logical
language. Not so easy to explain.
So as they sipped on coffee and Coke, waiting for
the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) opening
ceremony to begin, I ambushed seven young researchers
and goaded them into explaining their
work to me. Characterizing your specific research
can be simply too hard, so I gave them a slightly
broader invitation: On a single piece of paper, illustrate
what your research area is about.
Here is what they (very gamely!) contributed:
As Opeyemi was illustrating the mathematical
essence of internet security, I bugged her by asking
why the middle man has six limbs. “Because
he’s an attacker!” she explained.
From Mariia Fedorova, studying automata in
Ukraine:
From Tetiana Klychmuk, studying linear algebra
in Ukraine:
The graph in the upper left is a famous example
in the study of automata. To visualize the
program carrying out its commands, picture an
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