So You Are Moving to MastodonAfter Elon Musk announced its interest in acquiring twitter and even more now that he did it, there has been a growing influx of people to Mastodon, a decentralized social media platform inspired by twitter but in some sense further influenced by forums and emails.
There are a few tools and suggestions that have been shared around recently, and I thought of blogging them here to save them. The culture on Mastodon is quite different and more thoughtful than the one in Twitter. 2 min read -
Nov 4, 2022
The Man Who Saved GeometryThe other day I found an old file with links to interesting videos. Some of them were no longer available, some I still have to check, but one caught my attention and the other evening I decided to watch it.
It is a little documentary on the last conference of Donald Coexeter, and I enjoed watching it very much. You can find it embedded below, and linked above. And while collecting links for this post I have also discovered a nice writeup. 1 min read -
Jan 12, 2022
Research MinutesSince September I am a member of the Young Academy Groningen. One of the nice perks of being part of such incredible group of people (yes, I still wonder how I got there :P) was the opportunity to take a short course on dealing with the media and to record my “research minutes”, a short, 2 minutes long, video to popularize my work.
The video was published on Twitter some time ago, and is now available on youtube. 1 min read -
Nov 11, 2021
A Micro Course on Sub-Riemannian GeometryLast year I had the opportunity to give the first talk at the The Dutch Differential Topology & Geometry seminar (DDT&G). This was a 3 hour long event in which I had the chance to give a high-level introduction to sub-Riemannian geometry and present some interesting results and open questions partly related to my research.
In the first part of the seminar I introduced what are sub-Riemannian structures, where do they come from and what are some of the major properties and open questions, using some famous examples to drive the discussion. 2 min read -
Oct 21, 2021
Four Golden LessonsThe recent death of Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel prize in Physics and one of the most brilliant scientists of our times, made many people look back to his incredible production. In addition to some incredible eulogies, this has allowed a lot of little gems to resurface. Here I want to share one of them.
In 2003, Weinberg wrote a short note to PhD students in physics: “Four Golden Lessons”. 1 min read -
Jul 26, 2021
Material from Hamiltonian Mechanics 2021During the current incarnation of the course in Hamiltonian Mechanics I have collected some amount of material to share with the students. To avoid losing it in the guts of our teaching CMS, I leave it here for posterity, practically copy-pasting it without edits because I am really tired :D
The books on SpringerLinks linked below are accessible from our students for free via the university proxy but in general (unfortunately) not open access. 5 min read -
Mar 26, 2021
Lecture notes on Analysis on ManifoldsIn the previous academic term I had the pleasure to teach Analysis on Manifolds, essentially an introduction to differential geometry for third year students.
In the course I tried to address the topic with the perspective that some of the students would be joining also my master course in Hamiltonian Mechanics later on next year. So many of the topics go in the direction of introducing the prerequisites for studying flows, symplectic geometry and sub-Riemannian geometry. 1 min read -
Mar 25, 2021
Steven Strogatz ask me anything videoThis is a follow up from the previous post. I have stumbled upon a wonderful recent video by Steven Strogatz on Twitter which I believe could be extremely helpful for current and prospective PhD students in STEM, and for their advisors!
I think it is worth every minute of it:
Consider also listening to Strogatz’ The Joy of x podcast, it gives a beautiful, humane and informative snapshot into what research and researchers are like. 1 min read -
Mar 25, 2021
On doing a PhD (in STEM)I was asked a few times in the recent past if doing a PhD is worth the effort. Since then, I have been thinking of writing what I think on my blog but, as usual, I could never find the time for it. Not long ago, Jacopo Bertolotti shared his thoughts on the same matter in a nice twitter thread.
Since that really resonated with what I had to say, I’ll let him speak also for me and add a few more comments at the end. 5 min read -
Dec 4, 2020
Micro Course in Spectral Sub Riemannian GeometryRecently, I have had the pleasure and honour to give a “micro” course on spectral sub-Riemannian geometry for the Dutch Differential Topology and Geometry seminar. Given the current global circumstances, the course was given via Zoom and the organizers and participants have been kind enough to have it recorded and published online.
You can access the recordings of the first and second lecture on the YouTube Channel of the DDT&G. The slides are also available (beware, they are 99Mb of handwritten pdf! 1 min read -
Oct 13, 2020
