Organisation profile

The Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research is a national centre supporting research across a range of areas of mathematics in the UK.

At any one time the Heilbronn Institute typically has over 45 members.  These range from extremely distinguished senior visiting academics to postdoctoral researchers holding Heilbronn Research Fellowships.  Currently, more than 30 Research Fellows are supported, for between three and six years.  Since it was established, in 2005, over 170 mathematicians have been members of the Institute, including over 70 Research Fellows.

The Institute is run as a partnership between the UK Government Communications Headquarters and the University of Bristol.  It is located in Bristol and also has facilities in London.

Past and present contributors to the Institute’s work have included many distinguished mathematicians, such as Professors Sir John Ball, Bryan Birch, Clifford Cocks, David Hand, Roger Heath-Brown, Christopher Hooley, Frank Kelly, James Norris, Michael Paterson, Tony Scholl, Nicholas Shepherd-Barron, Sir Martin Taylor and Dominic Welsh.  They have come from over 25 UK universities.  More than eight universities currently host Heilbronn Research Fellows.

Each member of the Institute spends half their time pursuing research directed by the Government Communications Headquarters, and the other half doing personal academic research.

Research areas of interest include, but are not restricted to Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Combinatorics, Computational Statistics, Data Science, Number Theory, Probability, and Quantum Information.

The Heilbronn Institute runs a highly successful programme of events associated with its external research activities.  These include conferences, focused research groups, visitors and workshops.  The Institute also supports other high-profile UK mathematical meetings.

The Institute is named after Professor Hans Heilbronn FRS, who was a major contributor to UK mathematics and in particular to the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bristol.