Alain Goriely

Professor Goriely's lecture "The Shape of Shells" inspires abstract art Pr

It is a wonderful feeling when a math lecture resonates beyond its confine to inspire artists
www.gresham.ac.uk/about-us/new...

A very thoughtful take on AI development: "Machines can be immensely useful tools, but there are many things that we can only do for ourselves, and we cannot afford to lose the motivation to do so."

Model to predict neurodegenerative brain cell protein clustering — and therapeutic efficacy Clearance mechanisms are key to removing aggregates and maintaining metastability.

Also featured in #SciLight: pubs.aip.org/aip/sci/arti...

Congratulations and thank you to all involved Matthew W. Cotton, @alaingoriely.bsky.social and David Klenerman!

A universal phase-plane model for in vivo protein aggregation Neurodegenerative diseases are driven by the accumulation of protein aggregates in the brain of affected individuals. The aggregation behavior in vitro is well

Why can cells keep protein aggregation under control for years and then suddenly tip into disease?

Our new JCP paper introduces a simple phase-plane model for in vivo protein aggregation that captures the tug-of-war between aggregate formation and clearance in cells.
pubs.aip.org/aip/jcp/arti...

Finally

A universal phase-plane model for in vivo protein aggregation Neurodegenerative diseases are driven by the accumulation of protein aggregates in the brain of affected individuals. The aggregation behavior in vitro is well

By capturing the balance between aggregate formation and cellular clearance, our model explains decades of stability before sudden runaway dynamics, and offers a framework to predict disease onset and therapeutic efficacy. Mostly driven by Matthew Cotton and Georg Meisl doi.org/10.1063/5.03...

Drift-Diffusion Matching: Embedding dynamics in latent manifolds of asymmetric neural networks Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) provide a theoretical framework for understanding computation in biological neural circuits, yet classical results, such as Hopfield's model of associative memory, rel...

🚨PREPRINT

In our new paper, we link RNNs and neural manifolds by introducing the DDM framework.
We can train networks to embed an arbitary dynamical system in a latent subspace. We illustrate this with simple models of input-driven and autonomous associative memory. Enjoy!

arxiv.org/abs/2602.14885

When it comes to the brain's conservation of energy, practice makes perfect.

Watch Dani Bassett's lecture on our brain's neural system function and its implications for health, disease and neural computation.

Online now: youtu.be/7uGxRE7kmHI

Alzheimer’s disease is shaped by interactions between Aβ and tau, which together drive neurodegeneration. However, how these processes unfold across brain regions and over time remains unclear.
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‼️ New preprint ‼️
How do amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau drive Alzheimer’s disease over time?
We introduce a parsimonious, mechanism-based dynamical ATN (dATN) model to simulate longitudinal imaging biomarkers. A short thread 👇
Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In-person tickets open: The Shape of #Gravity: Why On Earth Are Planets Spherical?

Professor Alain Goriely* explores how gravity shapes planets, from Earth’s squashed form to the limits of spherical worlds https://gres.hm/shape-gravity

*also of Oxford Mathematics‬
#astronomy #maths

The Shape of Plants: Why Plants Love Mathematics and Mathematicians Love Plants Looking at the plant world, one discovers beautiful and fascinating structures in the shape and arrangement of leaves, stems, and roots. Some are simple and symmetric, other features are arranged in e...

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@alaingoriely.bsky.social on the Shape of Plants @greshamcollege.bsky.social

(featuring our work with @christhorogood.bsky.social on Nepenthes at the end www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...)

www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/sh...

J. Cole - Safety (Official Audio) YouTube video by J. Cole

An unlikely collab between famous rapper J Cole and (very famous) mathematician Andrew Wiles (or Big AW as he is known in the rap world).
www.youtube.com/watch?si=qir...

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an insect, a bird, and an elephant visualized with unit height scaling. insect is landscape shaped and the elephant is portrait shaped

Why is it that small animals like insects have a landspace body plan when viewed head-on, but larger animals like elephants are taller than wide?

With @m-v.bsky.social, we find out in our new preprint titled 'Size and shape of terrestrial animals' - arxiv.org/html/2602.00...

The Academy for the Mathematical Sciences has announced its first cohort of fellows, 100 in total from academia, teaching, science communication and business. Twelve of those fellows are from Oxford.

Who's who: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/80068

Clash of the titans.
Chaplain and Preziosi on my left at 856 pages vs
Keener and Sneyd on my right at 1222 pages.

Global brain activity links subcortical degeneration to cortical tau progressively across Braak regions over early Alzheimer disease stages https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.23.701360v1

Job alert🚨I am advertising a 2-year postdoctoral position to work on the mathematics of plant morphogenesis @mpipz.bsky.social. Candidates with interests in mathematical modelling, mechanics, or biophysics are strongly encouraged to apply. 🌱Reposts are appreciated!

jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/4...

"The geometers, who calculate nothing, imagine that a problem is solved once they have enclosed it within a formula that no one wishes to use"

In a sarcastic book (Histoire de l’Astronomie du dix-huitième siècle) published in 1827, Joseph Delambre writes about mathematicians:

"Les géomètres, qui ne calculent rien, s’imaginent qu’un problème est résolu quand ils l’ont renfermé dans une formule dont personne ne veut faire usage."

Register for the LMS/@ima-maths.bsky.social Crighton Award Lecture on 13 May at The Royal Society.
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The lecture will be given by Alain Goriely (@oxfordmathematics.bsky.social), winner of the 2025 award for his contributions to the public understanding of maths.

➡️ www.lms.ac.uk/events/lms-i...

❗🧠 New review in IEEE RBME

How network math models are reshaping how we think about neurodegenerative disease, from brain dynamics to disease progression

"Network models of neurodegeneration: bridging neuronal dynamics and disease progression"
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/113...

We all have to compromise and it starts right at the top with our brains.

Dani Bassett will demonstrate how the principle of network economy informs our study of neural system function in health and disease and provides a lens on neural computation.

Book: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/79854

Christiana's first Mathematical Physiology lecture was so popular (aside from the occasional comment that university teaching isn't what it was in Isaac Newton's day etc.) that we'd thought you tell you that the second lecture is now available.

youtu.be/3u1GSYOQEL8

We're starting our 2026 student lectures for the wider public with eight lectures from Christiana Mavroyiakoumou's 4th year Mathematical Physiology course.

Watch lecture 1: youtu.be/lgrwTpgeJo8

And look out for lectures on dynamics, geometry, special relativity and more.

Biophysics of organoids In this review, Weichselberger, Moore et al. discuss how physics-based approaches illuminate organoid development and homeostasis by integrating mechanical, chemical, and informational processes. They...

Interested in the biophysics of organoids? We just published a review in Dev Cell—take a look! dlvr.it/TPyTb8 #Organoids #Biophysics

Cats are mathematically smart. They can count to nine, they are rarely heading for a fall, and when they are, they always land on their feet. But sometimes they just don't know whether they are coming or going.

Here is the link to download the PDF of my course#5 on Biological computation. I present & discuss Self-tuning, Adaptation and Learning in biological (non-neuronal) systems, in particular during embryonic development.
This course contains various personal ideas/proposals.
tinyurl.com/hcpwsbtm