Jan Draisma

Professor of Mathematics

Contact
Publications
Programs
Talks
Teaching
Service
Recreational


News

April 2026: I was a guest in Fokus Forschung, a series of interviews about the sciences. Lisa Kattner and I discussed the necessity of curiosity-driven math on the one hand, and of an open eye for applications on the other hand. After that, I illustrated what I do by explaining the notion of Euclidean distance degree for a general audience. You can find a recording of my interview on youtube. It's mostly without image, but in the second half there are two slides explaining the ED degree.

Spring 2026: After a break, we are re-starting the Intercity Seminar.

Fall 2025: My group's new seminar webpage is up.

March 2-March 20, 2026: Bernoulli programme on algebraic aspects of metric and integral geometry. We welcome applications for the school (March 9-13) and registrations for the converence (March 16-20).

3 November 2025: Schläfli lecture by Kathlén Kohn.

Teaching

Tropical Geometry, VU

This site will contain detailed information about the Master's course Tropical Geometry (code X_418163) that I will be teaching in Amsterdam in Fall 2015. Tropical geometry is an active area of research at the interplay between (computational) algebraic geometry, polyhedral combinatorics, and non-Archimedean geometry. It also has many relations to max-plus algebra used in certain branches of optimisation. Here is preliminary information, to be completed once the course starts running:
  • I will mostly use the soon-to-appear textbook by Diane Maclagan and Bernd Sturmfels; see this page and this page for an earlier version.
  • In addition, I will cover material from these Oberwolfach lecture notes by Itenberg, Mikhalkin, and Shustin.
  • The lectures are on Fridays from 10-13 in room WN-P624 at VU Amsterdam, starting September 4.
  • There will be assignments and a written exam; the latter takes place on December 18 from 8:45 to 11:30.
  • If you are a Master's student in mathematics at a Dutch university different from VU or UvA, you will need to register as a "bijvakstudent", and possibly need a document from your home affiliation to prove that you may follow this course. See this page for information (unfortunately, in Dutch).
  • See these slides for a very brief idea about tropical geometry (talk for a students' conference in Dutch).
Notes per lecture (disclaimer: these have not been proofread, so they may contain many typo's!)