Serte Donderwinkel
I am an assistant professor (with a tenure track) in probability theory at the University of Groningen. I am also affiliated with the interdisciplinary centre CogniGron of mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and material engineers that aim to improve learning-based cognitive computing with materials-centred systems.
My research is supported by a European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. I also won the Royal Statistical Society's prize for UK's best applied probability PhD thesis of 2022 and 2023.
Before moving to Groningen, I was a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in the research group of Prof. Louigi Addario-Berry, where I was funded by a CRM-ISM Postdoctoral Fellowship. I completed my PhD at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof. Christina Goldschmidt, where I was also a Stipendiary Lecturer at St. Hugh's College.
Most of my research involves random trees and random graphs, and I sometimes do some probabilistic combinatorics as well. I like cute sampling procedures and bijections.
I am currently supervising the research projects of Elaine Herrera (PhD), Jeroen van Haastert (MSc), Peteris Silins (MSc), Eduardo Cubillo Nevado (BSc) and Nicolas Jalon (Honours).
s.a. lastname @ rug.nl
You can find me in office 436 in the Bernoulliborg.
Bachelor or master project?
I am happy to supervise bachelor or master students from Groningen or elsewhere that want to work on a question in discrete probability theory. Together, we can look for a topic that we are both interested in. Feel free to send an email or to drop by my office!
Teaching
I teach Introduction to Graph Theory for first-year bachelor students and Combinatorial Mathematics B (on random graphs) for first and second-year master students.
Women+ lunch
With Cecília Salgado and Lara Vicino, we organize a monthly lunch meeting for female and non-binary identifying master students and academic staff in (applied) mathematics in Groningen. Send me an email if you are interested in attending!
Upcoming events
BIRS-CMI workshop on mathematical foundations of network models and their applications, 9-20 December 2024, Bangalore, India, organiser
Conférence de GdR Branchement, 27-31 January 2025, Orsay, France, mini-course lecturer
SLMath Program on Probability and Statistics of Discrete Structures, 21 January-16 May 2025, Berkeley, United States, research member
University of Washington probability seminar, 3 March 2025, Seattle, United States, seminar speaker
Bellairs workshop on probability and combinatorics, March 28-April 4 2025, Holetown, Barbados, invited participant
Bristol University probability seminar, 19 May 2025, Bristol, United Kingdom, seminar speaker
Warwick University probability seminar, 21 May 2025, Coventry, United Kingdom, seminar speaker
Bath University probability seminar, 23 May 2025, Bath, United Kingdom, seminar speaker
Workshop evolving and spatial random graphs, June 1-5, Baryrischzell, Germany, invited speaker
Workshop in honour of Royal Statistical Society thesis prize, 11 July 2025, London, United Kingdom, organiser
CWI Themed Semester on phase transitions in probability, combinatorics and algorithms, Spring 2026, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, organiser
Research
Brandenberger, A., Donderwinkel, S., Kerriou, C., Lugosi, G. and Mitchell, R., Temporal connectivity of Random Geometric Graphs, 2025, arXiv:2502.15274
Donderwinkel, S. and Khanfir, R., Tight universal bounds on the height times the width of random trees, 2024, arXiv:2501.00458
Bassan, M., Donderwinkel, S. and Kolesnik, B., Tournament score sequences, Erdős-Ginzburg-Ziv numbers, and the Lévy-Khintchine method, 2024, arXiv:2407.01441
Bassan, M., Donderwinkel, S. and Kolesnik, B., Graphical sequences and plane trees, 2024, arXiv:2406.05110
Addario-Berry, L., Albenque, M, Donderwinkel, S. and Khanfir, R. Refined Horton-Strahler numbers I: a discrete bijection, 2024, arXiv:2406.03025
Addario-Berry, L., Briend, S., Devroye, L., Donderwinkel, S., Lugosi, G. and Kerriou, C. Random friend trees, 2024, arXiv:2403.20185
Donderwinkel, S. and Kolesnik, B. Asymptotics for Sinaĭ excursions, 2024, arXiv:2403.12941
Donderwinkel, S. and Kolesnik, B. Tournaments and random walks, 2024, arxiv:2403.12940
Addario-Berry, L., Donderwinkel, S. and Kortchemski, I. Critical trees are neither short nor fat, 2023, arXiv:2311:06163, to appear in Annales Henri Lebesgue
Balister, P., Donderwinkel, S., Groenland, C., Johnston, T., and Scott, A. Counting graphic sequences via integrated random walks, 2023, arXiv:2301.07022, to appear in Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
Addario-Berry, L., and Donderwinkel, S., Random trees have height O(√n), 2022, arXiv:2201.11773, to appear in the Annals of Probability
Addario-Berry, L., Blanc-Renaudie, A., Donderwinkel, S., Maazoun, M., and Martin, J. The Foata–Fuchs proof of Cayley’s formula, and its probabilistic uses, Electron. Commun. Probab. 28: 1-13 (2023), DOI: 10.1214/23-ECP523
Donderwinkel, S., and Xie, Z. Universality for the directed configuration model: metric space convergence of the strongly connected components at criticality, 2021, arXiv:2105.11434
Donderwinkel, S. Height process convergence of supercritical Galton-Watson forests, with an application to the configuration model in the critical window, 2021, arXiv:2105.12109, to appear in Advances in Applied Probability
Theses
The structure of large random graphs, PhD Thesis, August 2022, supervised by Christina Goldschmidt
The ant in the labyrinth, written in April 2018 as part of Part iii of the Mathematics Tripos at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Perla Sousi, primarily based on a paper by Noam Berger, Nina Gantert and Yuval Peres
Stein's method applied to preferential attachment graphs, written in June 2016 as part of BSc in Mathematics at the University of Groningen, supervised by Daniel Rodrigues-Valesin and Aernout van Enter, primarily based on a paper by Nathan Ross