Serte Donderwinkel
I am an assistant professor (with a tenure track) in probability theory at the University of Groningen. I am also affiliated with the interdisciplinary centre CogniGron of mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and material engineers that aim to improve learning-based cognitive computing with materials-centred systems.
Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in the research group of Prof. Louigi Addario-Berry, where I was funded by a CRM-ISM Postdoctoral Fellowship. I completed my PhD at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof. Christina Goldschmidt, where I was also a Stipendiary Lecturer at St. Hugh's College.
My research is in discrete probability. The common denominator of my projects is that they involve creative sampling procedures that, combined with tools from (stochastic) analysis, allow me to study the large-scale structure of the random tree or graph. Whether I am obtaining a large deviations principle, solving a counting problem with the probabilistic method or proving a metric space scaling limit, I always devote most attention to finding a smart way of sampling that unlocks the result that I am after. This approach has allowed my coauthors and I to answer questions in both discrete probability and probabilistic combinatorics, asked by for example Svante Janson, Alex Scott, Colin McDiarmid, Gordon Royle and Paul Erdős.
s.a. lastname @ rug.nl
You can find me in office 446 in the Bernoulliborg
PhD position
I will be recruiting a PhD student to start in 2024 or early 2025. Do you want to work on discrete probability and do you want to live in one of the best small cities in the world? Or do you know someone suitable? Don't hesitate to get in touch! More info on the job posting can be found here.
You can also contact me if you would like to do a bachelor or master project on a topic related to discrete probability.
Teaching
In term 2b I will be teaching the new graduate course Combinatorial Mathematics B. I will cover various models for random trees and graphs and I will discuss the probabilistic tools needed to study them.
Research
Addario-Berry, L, Briend, S., Devroye, L., Donderwinkel, S., Lugosi, G., Kerriou, C. Random friend trees, 2024, arXiv:2403.20185
Donderwinkel, S. and Kolesnik, B. Asymptotics for Sinaĭ excursions, 2024, arXiv:2403.12941
Donderwinkel, S. and Kolesnik, B. Tournaments and random walks, 2024, arxiv:2403.12940
Addario-Berry, L., Donderwinkel, S. and Kortchemski, I. Critical trees are neither short nor fat, 2023, arXiv:2311:06163
Balister, P., Donderwinkel, S., Groenland, C., Johnston, T., and Scott, A. Counting graphic sequences via integrated random walks, 2023, arXiv:2301.07022
Addario-Berry, L., and Donderwinkel, S., Random trees have height O(√n), 2022, arXiv:2201.11773, to appear in the Annals of Probability
Addario-Berry, L., Blanc-Renaudie, A., Donderwinkel, S., Maazoun, M., and Martin, J. The Foata–Fuchs proof of Cayley’s formula, and its probabilistic uses, Electron. Commun. Probab. 28: 1-13 (2023), DOI: 10.1214/23-ECP523
Donderwinkel, S., and Xie, Z. Universality for the directed configuration model: metric space convergence of the strongly connected components at criticality, 2021, arXiv:2105.11434
Donderwinkel, S. Height process convergence of supercritical Galton-Watson forests, with an application to the configuration model in the critical window, 2021, arXiv:2105.12109, to appear in Advances in Applied Probability
Upcoming events
Probability Seminar Leiden University, March 7 2024, Leiden, Netherlands, invited speaker
Young European Probabilists, March 2024, Eindhoven, Netherlands, invited speaker
Bellairs workshop on Probability and Combinatorics, March 2024, Holetown, Barbados, invited participant
Dutch Math Congres, April 2024, Lunteren, Netherlands, invited speaker
Dutch Association of Women in Mathematics (EWM-NL) session, April 2024, Lunteren, panel member
Zürich Probability seminar, May 2024, invited speaker
IMS-Bernoulli World Congress, August 2024, Bochum, Germany, invited speaker
BIRS-CMI workshop on mathematical foundations of network models and their applications, December 2024, Bangalore, India, organiser
SLMath Program on Probability and Statistics of Discrete Structures, February-May 2025, Berkeley, United States, Research Member
Theses
The structure of large random graphs, PhD Thesis, August 2022, supervised by Christina Goldschmidt
The ant in the labyrinth, written in April 2018 as part of Part iii of the Mathematics Tripos at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Perla Sousi, primarily based on a paper by Noam Berger, Nina Gantert and Yuval Peres
Stein's method applied to preferential attachment graphs, written in June 2016 as part of BSc in Mathematics at the University of Groningen, supervised by Daniel Rodrigues-Valesin and Aernout van Enter, primarily based on a paper by Nathan Ross