4th - 9th Oct. 2015

From 4th to 9th October 2015, an international Summer School on „Large Fluctuations and Extreme Events – Theory and Applications“ took place on the initiative of the Center for Dynamics (see also www.cfd.tu-dresden.de) which is part of TU Dresden. This interdisciplinary meeting was a cooperation between the School of Science at TU Dresden and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden (MPIPKS).

The Summer School addressed large fluctuations and extreme events along the three lines "Statistical Methods", "Mathematical Results" and "Physical Perspective". The latest research results from the fields of hydrology and meteorology completed the range of topics.

27 young scientists from all over the world were given the chance to acquire new insights, receive valuable ideas for their own scientific work, to talk about their research and generally get into contact with each other. For this purpose, the Summer School offered five lecture courses, six talks on specific applications, nine short presentations by selected participants, and a poster session.

The MPIPKS very kindly made their grounds available to the Summer School. Besides light-filled office buildings, their beautiful surroundings are full of meadows and fruit trees, have a small pond with goldfish and even boast an institute tomcat. All this contributed strongly to the easy, but at the same time intensive and highly concentrated work climate praised by all participants.

The social programme also played an important role in achieving a relaxed and friendly atmosphere: To get acquainted with each other, the participants could take part in a sightseeing tour themed „Dresden at night“ on the first evening. On Monday morning, the Rector of TU Dresden, Prof. Hans Müller-Steinhagen, officially launched the three Summer Schools that took place simultaneously in this first week of October by giving a very warm welcome address. Other highlights undoubtedly included the „Night of Excellence“ – a joint party for all Summer Schools –, and an excursion to the surroundings of Dresden: The visitors went to „Sächsische Schweiz“ – unfortunately on the only completely rainy day of the week – and made a trip to the „Bastei“ rock which of course is still an impressive sight even when it is rainy and foggy.

Although autumn undeniably really began that week, the Summer School – along with all other Summer Schools – was headed by the motto „Summer of Excellence“. It was made possible by TU Dresden as part of its institutional strategy and funded by the German Excellence Initiative.

The lectures were held by:

• Alvaro Corral Cano, Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain:
  Power laws and criticality /slides
• Ragnar Fleischmann, Department of Nonlinear Dynamics & Network Dynamics Group, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany:
  Theory of branched flow and the statistics of extreme waves I + II (Part I and Part II)
• Jorge Miguel Milhazes de Freitas, Departamento de Matemática Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal:
  A short course on extreme events, recurrence, mixing and their dynamical relations
• Nicholas R. Moloney, London Mathematical Laboratory, London, UK:
  An introduction to extreme value statistics /Part I (slides I), Part II (slides II)
• Gregory Schehr, Laboratoire de Physique Théoretique d’Orsay, Université Paris-Sud 11, Paris, France:
  Records statistics of strongly correlated variables / slides

There were also talks on specific applications; among them the following topics:

• Martin Greiner, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark:
  Renewable energy networks (slides)
• Holger Kantz, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany:
  Probabilistic predictions of extreme events and their validitation
• Yoshitaka Kuno, Osaka University, Japan:
  A challenge to discover new particle physics phenomena with extreme experimental sensitivity of 10^{-17}
• Bruce D. Malamud, King's College, London, UK:
  Tails of natural hazards (slides)
• Christoph Mudersbach, FH Bochum, Germany:
  The probability of floods - What does data tell us?
• Steven Tomsovic, Washington State University, Pullman, USA:
  Extreme events in random matrix theory