José Ferreirós is professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at Universidad de Sevilla.

He specializes in the history and philosophy of mathematics, with side interests in logic and physics; he authored a well known book on the development of set theory, and a philosophical text on mathematical knowledge and the interplay of practices.

Founding member and first president of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice (APMP), he is also a member of IMUS (Instituto de Matemáticas de la Universidad de Sevilla) and of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences (Brussels).

José Ferreirós

ABSTRACT

Tales of (mathematical) Paradise

Around a century ago, Hilbert was saying his famous words, that “nobody shall expel us” from the Cantorian paradise. The theory of sets had emerged rather suddenly, exactly 150 years ago, with a surprising paper of Cantor that has a peculiar inner story. In this history talk, I will be presenting three vignettes from the early history of set theory.

They represent three key moments: 1874 and the birth of transfinite cardinalities under funny circumstances; 1905, a highly polemical moment when the schism between constructivists and ‘formalists’ emerged; and 1925, the high time of the foundational debate between critics (Weyl, Brouwer, Skolem) and partisans of the higher infinite.

José López-Barneo is emeritus professor of Physiology and Biophysics in the Universidad de Sevilla.

He has been visiting professor in Stanford University and Columbia University. He founded the Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla (IBiS), which he directed from 2006 to 2020.

He received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (2016-2021) for studying molecular mechanisms of acute oxygen sensing. In 2023 he received the Santiago Ramón y Cajal national science award. He is a member of EMBO and Academia Europea.

His main research interests are related to the study of the mechanisms of acute oxygen sensing in mammals as well as the cellular adaptations to hypoxia. He also works on the molecular bases of neuroprotection and neurodegeneration, with special emphasis on Parkinson's disease.

Elonora Viezzer

ABSTRACT

Wave-particle interactions in tokamak fusion plasmas

The growing demand for cheap and sustainable energy calls for a long-term solution to the global world energy problem. To date, most of this energy is extracted from fossil fuels. Our generation is finally waking up and realizing the finiteness of these fuels and the negative consequences they have on the environment. Nuclear fusion is the energy source of the stars and our sun and has great potential to meet the world energy demands.

In the quest for fusion energy production a critical need is the ability to sustain a burning plasma, not only by controlling but also by predicting its dynamics. To date, the most advanced technological approach to confine a hot fusion plasma is to use magnetic fields that lead to toroidal magnetic surfaces. Within magnetic confinement fusion, the tokamak device has so far shown the best confinement properties. At present, the highest attainable pressure is achieved in the high-confinement regime (H-mode), the operational regime foreseen for the next-step fusion device ITER. This mode of operation is accompanied by a sharp decrease in the fluctuation level at the plasma edge, the formation of an edge transport barrier and the build-up of a steep edge pressure gradient. A characteristic pedestal structure with high edge temperature and density is formed which determines the increase in particle and energy confinement found in H-mode. The sharp gradients in the H-mode edge region are limited by the occurrence of edge localized modes (ELMs), violent magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities that expel jets of hot plasma, similar to solar flares on the edge of the Sun. ELMs pose a threat for steady-state operation in future fusion devices as they induce large energy fluences onto the plasma facing components, thus damaging the first wall. Understanding the nature and dynamics of ELMs is mandatory to develop robust ELM control and suppression techniques and high confinement regimes devoid of ELMs for future fusion devices.

Experiments at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak showed for the first time an acceleration of energetic ions during ELM crashes. Non-linear hybrid kinetic-MHD simulations reveal that the kinetic treatment of these energetic ions is key in understanding their effects on the spatio-temporal structure of ELMs in tokamaks. The resonant interaction between the drift orbits of the edge fast-ion population and the ELM electromagnetic perturbations results in a net exchange of energy and momentum between the wave and particles, which ultimately determines the spatio-temporal structure of the ELMs.

Eleonora's research field is plasma physics and fusion energy.

After defending her PhD thesis in 2013 at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich and Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) she became a EUROfusion Research Fellow at IPP. In 2016 she moved to the University of Seville with a Juan de la Cierva grant and a Marie Sklodowska Curie Grant.

There she founded the Plasma Science and Fusion Technology www.psft.eu group together with Prof. Manuel Garcia Muñoz, which now comprises of 33 team members. She is leading the Plasma Edge Physics research line and is co-IP of the SMART tokamak of the University of Seville. She was awarded with numerous prizes, including an ERC Starting Grant (2018), ERC Consolidator Grant (2023), the Princess of Girona Research Award (2022), the RSEF-BBVA Physics Prize (2022), the Manuel Losada Villasante Award (2021), the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize (2018) amongst others.

Prof. Montserrat Vilà is research professor at the Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC) in Sevilla (Spain).

As a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, she specialized on the ecology of plant invasions. Currently, her research focus on the impacts of biological invasions and the development of invasion risk assessments. She is member of the Scientific Forum of the European Regulation on Alien Invasive Species, the IUCN SSC Invasive Species Group, and president of the European Working Group on Biological Invasions (NEOBIOTA).

She is lead author of the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Assessment. In 2021, she received the Research National Prize Alejandro Malaspina in Environmental Sciences and Technology, and the Mercer Award of the Ecological Society of America.

Montserrat Vilá

ABSTRACT

Biotic Globalization by Invasive Species

The introduction of alien species promoted by human agency has accelerated in the last century with the global increase in trade, the movement of people and the development of large infrastructures. Many alien species are capable of establishing, expanding, and invading in the region of introduction. Many invasive species alter biodiversity and the environmental services provided by ecosystems.

They can affect all socio-economic sectors, from agriculture to tourism to public health. As with epidemics, strategies to deal with biological invasions require improved prevention and early detection policies and management.