EDUCATION

Mastermath

If you would like to teach a STAR Mastermath course in 2027/2028 year, please send us an email by 31 October following the instructions below. This also applies if you would like to repeat a course you are teaching this year.

We will discuss all course proposals at the next Stochastics Meeting in Lunteren.

Réka Szabó: r.szabo@rug.nl (probability)
Frank van der Meulen: f.h.van.der.meulen@vu.nl (statistics)



TO PROPOSE A COURSE

If you want to propose a Mastermath course then
1) Discuss your plans with the director or coordinator of your local master programme.
2) Send a proposal to one of the `clusters’ before 31 October 2026. THIS INCLUDES RECURRING COURSES AS WELL.

Proposals for multidisciplinary courses, or for courses that do not fit in the broad areas of the clusters can be sent directly to Asma Kheder (a.khedher@uva.nl) and Bodo Manthey (b.manthey@utwente.nl).
 
All proposals should include:

• Title, abstract and short description of prerequisites (including dependencies on other Mastermath courses)
• Level: M1 (basic master level), M2 (more advanced, e.g. requiring an M1 course as prerequisite), or R (research level, aimed at PhD students and talented & motivated master students)
• Preference for first or second semester and for time slots within the week
• Name and institute of lecturers
• The default for Mastermath courses is to teach on location. If you wish to (partially) deviate from this, include a well justified motivation for your choice. The teaching directors will take this into consideration when deciding on the course offer. We do not guarantee that requests to deviate from the default policy will be granted.
• A short description of how the lecturer plans to adapt the teaching and/or assessment in light of the increasing use of AI tools by students.
• Indicate with which courses you want to schedule your course and which should be avoided to be scheduled at the same time.


SELECTION PROCEDURE

For 2027/28, Mastermath plans to offer around 59 courses. This means that not all proposals will be honoured. In December, Mastermath will make a draft schedule in collaboration with the clusters and the teaching directors, and in January the teaching directors will decide upon the final programme. This includes which courses are taught, by whom, where and when.

Selection criteria include:
• The importance of the course in the individual programmes (according to the teaching directors)
• The relevance of the course within the area of expertise (according to the clusters)
• The expected number of students, and their distribution over the various universities
• The evaluation of the course and lecturers in past years

In 2026-2027 the following courses are offered:

• Causality
• Statistical mechanics
• Measure Theoretic Probability
• Asymptotic statistics
• E-values and Game Theoretic Statistics
• Time series
• Extremal and probabilistic combinatorics
• Random Matrix Methods for Statistics and Machine Learning
• Forensic Probability and Statistics
• Stochastic processes
• High-Dimensional Probability

Master Courses

Many interesting specialized Master courses are given locally.

Annual meeting of PhD students

The Meeting of PhD students in Stochastics in the Netherlands usually takes place in May. This meeting is organised by the AiO Network Stochastics. The meetings continue the tradition of AiO meetings following the Bijeenkomst Stochastici in Lunteren, at a different location, a different time, and in a different format.

The meeting consists of two short courses, one in probability and one in statistics,  and lectures by the participants. The purpose is both to learn topics of current research interest and to become acquainted with the work of other PhD students in The Netherlands.