I work in Data Science using stable-under-noise topological methods in Materials Science, Computer Vision, Climate. If you are a potential postdoc or PhD student with C++ skills and interest in Data Science, e-mail vitaliy.kurlin(at)gmail.com.
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Topological data analysis: tools and applications
Videos of a few talks explaining key ideas, basic examples and various applications of topological data analysis:
- 1-min video spotlight at CVPR 2014 (Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition), Columbus, Ohio (USA), June 2014.
- Applications of Topological Data Analysis to Computer Vision (1 hour), Microsoft Research Cambridge, February 2014.
- Reconstruction of plane graphs from noisy samples (1 hour), Informatics Forum, Edinburgh University, April 2013.
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Affiliations: current positions and connections
- Researcher at Materials Innovation Factory (University of Liverpool, UK) funded by Unilever, HEFCE, Leverhulme, ERC. MIF is a new £68 million facility associated with the 1st Chemistry department in the UK for 4* and 3* research.
- Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the 1st Computer Science department in the UK for 4* and 3* research.
- Visiting Scientist working towards an impact case in the Computer Vision group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK.
- Academic Supervisor of the intern student in Topological Data Analysis at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US.
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News: awards, papers and invited lectures
- August 2016 : 1-hour keynote lecture "Graph reconstruction from noisy scans based on persistent homology" at BTM (British Topology Meeting 2016), Glasgow University, UK.
- August 2016 : Mr Philip Smith has started the summer project Superpixel meshes for faster image and video processing funded by the London Mathematical Society.
- August 2016 : the on-going internship of Mr Grzegorz Muszynski co-supervised by me at Lawrence National Laboratory in Berkeley (US) has beed extended until mid-December 2016 with a prospect of a future funding for PhD in the UK.
- July 2016 : 30-min demo "Graph reconstruction from noisy point samples" at ATMCS 8 (Applied Topology: Methods, Computation, Science, the main biannual conference in Applied Topology), Turin, Italy.
- July 2016 : 20-min oral presentation "Topological Computer Vision" at 7 ECM (European Congress of Mathematics, the main quadrennial European conference in Mathematics), Berlin, Germany.
- July 2016 : Mr Aryaman Patel from National Institute of Technology Karnataka (India) has successfully completed his summer project in Computational Geometry. We are planning to finish a joint research paper by the end of 2016.
- Since March 2013 : older news stories are in the news archive.
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Career highlights: achievements since 2005
- Recent research : developing the new area of Topological Computer Vision (blog post).
- Postdoc : Dr Alexey Chernov (2011 - 2012), now a Lecturer in Statistics at Brighton University.
- PhD students : Dr Marjan Safi-Samghabadi (completed in 2013), Mr Chris Smithers (since 2015).
- Major collaboration with Andrew Fitzgibbon, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge.
- Most prestigious grant : Marie Curie International Incoming Postdoctoral Fellowship (2005 - 2007).
- Keynote applied talk : Topological Computer Vision at Prospects in Data Science (January 2016).
- Best applied paper : V.Kurlin, Computer Graphics Forum (Aug 2015, journal impact factor 1.64).
- Best conference paper : V.Kurlin, Proceedings of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (2014), a top 3 conference in entire Computer Science and the highest h-index conference in any field.
- Teaching award : one of 3 final nominees in the Science Faculty for a Lecturer of the Year (2013).
- Best pure maths talk : 20-min oral at International Congress of Mathematicians 2006, Madrid.
- Best pure maths paper : V.Kurlin, Compressed Drinfeld associators, Journal of Algebra (2005).
- Largest admin success : as the MSc course director in 2011-2013, I doubled the enrolment by asking candidates to solve maths problems, which brought extra 100K+ GBP to university.
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Aawards: fellowships and research grants
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Knowledge Transfer Secondments at
Microsoft
Research Cambridge with Andrew Fitzgibbon 2014 - 2015 : EPSRC gave 20K GBP, Microsoft provided 75K GBP in-kind contribution Title : Applications of Topological Data Analysis to Computer Vision. |
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Summer bursary of the London Mathematical Society for Philip Smith (value 1.1K GBP) to work on our project Superpixel meshes for faster image and video processing in August - September 2016, closely related to the collaboration with Microsoft Research Cambridge. |
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Grant (3K GBP, jointly with M.Grinfeld and M.Haw) to run the ATI strategic workshop on 14 March 2016 : Topological Data Analysis in Materials Science and Engineering. |
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Travel grant of the London Mathematical Society to give the contributed 20-min talk Topological Computer Vision in the section Mathematical Image and Signal Processing at 7ECM (European Congress of Mathematicians) at TU Berlin on 18-22 July 2016. |
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Grant (1.7K Euros) by the ACAT (Applied and Computational Algebraic Topology) network of ESF (European Science Foundation) to visit IST Austria (March 2015). |
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Applied Algebraic Topology network in the UK jointly organised since 2014 with M.Farber, J.Brodzki, J.Grbić, M.Grant, D.Schuetz and funded by LMS, GMJT, IMA with 4 meetings per year at Aberdeen, Durham, Queen Mary London, Southampton. |
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EPSRC first grant (100K GBP) with post-doctoral assistant
Dr Alexey Chernov Title : Persistent Topological Structures in Noisy Images (ref. EP/I030328/1) followed by a collaboration with Microsoft, 2011 - 2013. |
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Marie Curie International Incoming Postdoctoral Fellowship (142K Euros) Combinatorial Knot Theory, Liverpool (UK), September 2005 - May 2007. |
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Postdoctoral Fellowship (22K Euros) on Combinatorial Group Theory at University of Burgundy, Dijon (France), December 2003 - November 2004. |
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INTAS PhD Fellowship (10K Euros) at Moscow State University (Russia), March 2001 - February 2003, covered costs of research collaboration at Universities of Montpellier II, Liverpool, Dijon, Toulouse III, Paris VII. |
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Group in Topological Data Analysis
- Grzegorz Muszynski will start his PhD at Liverpool funded by the Lawrence Berkeley lab (US) in January 2017.
- Christopher Smithers : PhD student funded since 2015 by the Leverhulme Trust programme in Visual Culture.
- Summer students in 2016 : Aryaman Patel, David Torkington (MSc), Cheng Shen (MSc), Philip Smith (LMS).
- Past project IV students in 2015-2016 : Donald Harvey, Jeremy Forsythe, Christopher Parkinson, Lewin Strauss.
- Dr Alexey Chernov: postdoc in 2011 - 2012, now a Lecturer in Statistics at Brighton University, we continue our collaboration on combining Topological Data Analysis with Machine Learning.
- Dr Marjan Safi-Samghabadi: PhD student in 2009 - 2013, a lecturer at Alzahra State University (Iran), we now collaborate on Topological Data Analysis for Materials Science with Stratchclyde University, UK.
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Join the group in Topological Data Analysis
- If you would like to join as an intern, PhD student or postdoc, e-mail vitaliy(dot)kurlin(at)gmail(dot)com.
- For summer internships, e.g. for top students from India or China, we can host you for 10-12 weeks if you have funds from your university (about 2K GBP for accommodation plus visa and travel costs).
- We may support your application for a PhD studentship or a postdoctoral fellowship:
- EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowships (no deadline, best submitted in January or July)
- Royal Society Newton International Fellowships (deadline in February-March)
- Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships (deadline in February-March).
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Education : PhD (2003), two MSc and PGCert
- PhD in Geometry and Topology,
Moscow State University (Russia),
November 2000 - October 2003
Thesis : Basic embeddings of graphs and 3-page embeddings of graphs.
Supervisors: Professor Victor Buchstaber, Professor Arkady Skopenkov. - MSc in Mathematics,
Independent University of Moscow (Russia), 1995 - 2002 (part-time)
Thesis : Turaev-Viro invariants of compact 3-dimensional manifolds. - MSc in Mathematics (grade point average 5.0/5),
Moscow State University (Russia),
September 1995 - June 2000
Thesis : 3-page diagrams of spatial 3-valent graphs. - Gold medal (top grades 5/5 in all subjects) Physical-Mathematical School N146, Perm (Russia), June 1995.
- Top grades in mathematics and physics in the 2-year distance course by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Sep 1993 - May 1995) whose famous graduates include recent Nobel laureates A. Geim and K. Novoselov.
- PGCert : Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Durham (2008 - 2009) and full membership of the Higher Education Academy, UK.
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Experience : CV and job history since 2000
- Vitaliy Kurlin's curriculum vitae (pdf, 4 pages, 345K, last updated in September 2016)
- Current research : Computational Methods for Materials Science, Vision, Climate
- Past research : topology, graphs, singularity theory and non-commutative algebra
- Skills : C/C++ (industry level), Java, Matlab, PHP, Python, Javascript, HTML5, CSS3
- Since 2016: Senior Lecturer, Computer Science, Materials Innovation Factory, Liverpool.
- Since 2014: visiting scientist in Computer Vision, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK
- 2007 - 2013: university lecturer (permanent) in pure mathematics, United Kingdom
- June - September 2007 : research postdoc in Sensor Networks, University of Lancaster, UK
- September 2005 - May 2007 : research postdoc in Knot Theory, University of Liverpool, UK
- February - May 2005 : teaching postdoc in Knot Theory, Independent University of Moscow, Russia
- Dec 2003 - Nov 2004 : research postdoc in Combinatorial Group Theory, University of Burgundy, France
- October 2000 - June 2001 : C++ programmer in traffic recognition, TochMash Module, Moscow, Russia
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