Şefika Kuzgun

Postdoctoral Researcher
Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI MiS), Leipzig
E-mail: sefika.kuzgun@mis.mpg.de

• Research

• Service

I am currently a Postdoc in the research group of Prof. Dr. Felix Otto at Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig. Before this, I was a Postdoc at University of Rochester, Department of Mathematics with Professor Carl Mueller and Professor Arjun Krishnan. I received my Ph.D. in 2022 from University of Kansas in Mathematics under the supervision of Professor David Nualart. I do research in stochastic analysis and SPDEs. I grew up in Türkiye. Here is my vitae.

The applications for the CIMPA summer school on Probability and Applied Analysis are now open. Contact me if you have any questions.

I am featured in Math Planck People Potrait Series.

  Research

1. Time-dependent averages of a critical long-range stochastic heat equation. (Joint with Ran Tao.) Comments and suggestions are welcome. Arxiv.
2. On the radius of self-repellent fractional Brownian motion. (Joint with Le Chen, Carl Mueller and Panqiu Xia.) Journal of Statistical Physics. Arxiv.
3. Convergence of densities of spatial averages of the parabolic Anderson model driven by colored noise. (Joint with David Nualart.) Stochastics. Arxiv.
4. Convergence of densities of spatial averages of stochastic heat equation. (Joint with David Nualart.) Stochastic Processes and Applications. Arxiv.
5. Feynman-Kac formula for iterated derivatives of the parabolic Anderson model. (Joint with David Nualart.) Potential Analysis. Arxiv.
6. Rate of convergence in the Breuer-Major theorem via chaos expansions. (Joint with David Nualart.) Stochastic Analysis and Applications. Arxiv.

• PhD Thesis - Applications of Malliavin-Stein Method: Spatial averages of solution to stochastic heat equation and Breuer-Major theorem. Pdf.
• Master's Thesis - Smoothing estimates for the periodic KdV equation. Pdf.

• Oberwolfach report - Basic concepts and reconstruction theorem. Pdf.

•    2025
  
  May 21 - 23. Speaker at SPDEvent, University of Bielefeld.
  
  Apr 9. Speaker at Math Colloquium, Bilkent University, Türkiye.
  
  Feb 27. Speaker at the short talks session of Winter school on Statistical Mechanics, Nonequilibrium Processes and Probability, University of Rome La Sapienza.
  
  Jan 17. Speaker at Probability Seminar, University of Bristol.
  
  Jan 16. Speaker at Probability Seminar, Cardiff University.
  
  Jan 13. Speaker at Probability Seminar, University of Bath.
  


•    2024
  
  Nov 22. Speaker at Function Spaces Seminar, Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
  
  Nov 8. Speaker at AG Analysis-Probability, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig.
  
  Sep 9 - Sep 12. Speaker at young researchers session of 36th National Mathematics Symposium, Amasya University, Türkiye.
  
  Jun 10 - Jun 14. Speaker at the stochastic PDE minisymposia at The Equadiff Conference, Karlstad University, Sweden.
  
  Jun 6 - Jun 7. Speaker at Ankara - Istanbul Workshop on Stochastic Days, Middle East Technical University, Türkiye.
  
  Mar 18. Speaker at Probability Seminar, Cornell University, New York.
  
  
•    2023
  
  Dec 17 - Dec 22. Participant/presenter at Arbeitsgemeinschaft: QFT and stochastic PDEs, Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (MFO), Germany.
  
  Nov 20 - Nov 24. Speaker at 14th Symposium on Probability and Stochastic Processes, Center of Research in Mathematics (CIMAT), Guanajuato, Mexico.
  
  Jul 2 - Jul 14. Speaker at 51st Probability Summer School, Saint-Flour, France.
  
  Jun 28 - Jun 30. Speaker at Turkish Mathematical Society's Meeting for Young Mathematicians, Nesin Mathematics Village, Türkiye.
  
  Jan 3. Speaker at Math Colloquium, Koç University, Türkiye.
  


•    2022
  
  Nov 8. Speaker at Penn/Temple Probability Seminar, Temple University, Pennsylvania.
  
  Sep 23. Speaker at Probability, Ergodic Theory, Mathematical Physics Seminar, University of Rochester.
  
  Apr 23. Speaker at Kansas Math Graduate Student Conference, Kansas State University.
  


•    2021
  
  Dec 3 - Dec 5. Speaker at Frontier Probability Days, University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
  
  Oct 4 - Oct 6. Speaker at the contributed talks session of Junior Female Researchers in Probability, Berlin, online.
  
  Aug 2 - Aug 6. Speaker at Gaussian Random Fields, Fractals, SPDEs, and Extremes, University of Alabama in Huntsville.
  
  Jun 16 - Jun 18. Speaker at the PhD Session of Young Researchers between Geometry and Stochastic Analysis 2021, online.
  
  Jun 11. Speaker at the Math Grad Seminars, Boğaziçi University, online.
  
  

• Jul 29 - Aug 4, 2024. Summer school on Probability with / on random graphs: trees, networks, dimers, assignments, Nesin Mathematics Village, Türkiye.
  
  Jun 29 - Jul 12, 2025. Probability and analysis summer school, Feza Gürsey Center for Physics and Mathematics, Türkiye.
  

  Service

During the academic year 2023/24, I have contributed to the efforts of building a Women in Mathematics group at University of Rochester.

After a major earthquake struck Türkiye in February, I cofounded a math support platform to assist college students with their coursework and alleviate the earthquake's impact on education. This platform aimed to provide academic resources and support to students who were affected by the disaster, ultimately helping them to continue their studies and succeed in their math classes.

I founded the Directed Reading Program Türkiye together with Feride Ceren Köse and Oğuz Şavk, and I was among the organizers during 2021 and 2022 and a scientific committee member during 2023 and 2024. Besides, I had a unique experience of mentoring students: Sahra Karakoç, Zeynel Uluşan, Hamit Alp Cömert, Fatma Melike Güler. The linked videos are their presentations at the end of the program in corresponding year.

I am the past president of University of Kansas Student Chapter of Association for Women in Mathematics (2020-2021). In addition to hosting regular weekly seminars, I initiated the special online meetings for graduate students to socialize during Covid-19 conditions. I served on the executive board of University of Kansas Student Chapter of the American Mathematical Society for two years, first as the secretary and then as vice president. During these two years, we organized for example, a series of seminars for professional development, a mentoring program for beginning graduate students and study groups for qualifying exams.

I had been a volunteer for the April Math Awareness Month activities at the University of Kansas, where local fifth graders spend a day with graduate students playing math related games (2019-2022).

Here is a list containing helpful links:

• Directed Reading Program Türkiye
• Women in Probability
• Advice for Probability Graduate Students maintained by Carl Mueller. It includes a broad list of upcoming conferences/summer schools.
• Online Research Seminars
• Malliavin-Stein Approach maintained by Ivan Nourdin.