Dr Bernd Schroers

• I am the postgraduate director of studies in the Department of Mathematics
• I currently run the fourth year Mathematics Projects and teach the courses Problem Solving and Mathematics for Scientists II
• In previous semesters I wrote and taught the department’s courses on Quantum Computing and Mathematics of Motion
• I am associated faculty member of AIMS South Africa (see Further Information)

My research area is mathematical physics.

Current interests and research projects include

• The role of non-commutative geometry in quantum gravity. I study 2+1 dimensional models to clarify this role.
• Solitons in quantum field theory – such as non-abelian magnetic monopoles, vortices and Skyrmions. I study quantum aspects of solitons in all these models, and am currently particularly interested in spectral properties of the Dirac operator coupled to solitons. 
• Electric-magnetic duality , particularly in theories with non-abelian residual gauge symmetry
• Quantum groups and Poisson Lie groups (closely linked to the quantum gravity research)

I am a founding member of the Edinburgh Mathematical Physics Groups and am the principal organiser of the North British Mathematical Physics Seminar.

My current PhD students are Kim Smedley Williams at Heriot-Watt and Prince Koree Osei at the University of Ghana. Former PhD students are Catherine Meusburger  , Katie Russell, Erik de Vries and Giorgos Papageorgiou.

Former post docs in my group: Joost Slingerland

• Supercharges, Quantum States and Angular Momentum for N=4 Supersymmetric Monopoles 0(with E. de Vries) Nucl. Phys. B 839 (2010) 157-186
• A Chern-Simons approach to Galilean Quantum Gravity in 2+1 dimensions 0(with G. Papageourgiou) JHEP11(2009)009
• q-deformation and semi-dualisation in 3d quantum gravity 0(with S. Majid) J. Phys. A 42 (2009) 425402,
• The interaction energy of well-separated Skyrme solitons 0(with N. Manton and M. Singer) Commun. Math. Phys. 245 (2004) 123-147.
• Broken quantum symmetry and confinement phases in planar physics 0(with F.A. Bais and J.K. Slingerland) Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 (2002) 181601--181604.0
• Attractive channel Skyrmions and the deuteron 0(with R.A. Leese and N.S. Manton) Nuclear Physics B 442 (1995) 228--267. 0
• Full list of publications is available

I grew up in Germany but completed my secondary education at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales. Subsequently I studied physics and mathematics at the University of Bonn and obtained my Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge (DAMTP). I then worked as a post doc in Durham, and Amsterdam and as an EPSRC advanced research fellow at the University of Edinburgh before joining Heriot-Watt University as a Lecturer in 2000. I became a Reader in 2005.

I am involved with AIMS-Next Einstein Initiative  to set up a network of African Institutes for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) . I have taught courses on Differential Equations at AIMS South Africa annually since 2005, and am a member of the steering committee for the proposed AIMS in Ghana.

My book on Ordinary Differential Equations, based on my course at AIMS, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2011