About the Department

The Department of Mathematics of the University of Trento was constituted in the mid seventies, formerly as Department of Mathematics and Physics, assuming the actual denomination at the beginning of the eighties.

At that time the University of Trento was still a private university, with only three faculties and a small number of students.

The first group of researchers working at the Department of Mathematics was mainly involved in Calculus of Variations, Algebra and in the field of Partial Differential Equations of non linear type. Among the professors at that time, the most known are probably M. Miranda and E. Giusti in the field of Calculus of Variations, G. Zacher and M.W. Baldoni in Algebra, G. Da Prato and H. Beirao da Veiga in the field of Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations. Their influence on the research at the Department of Mathematics has been important for many years, even after their departure from Trento.

At the beginning of the eighties another group of researchers started to work in Algebraic Geometry and Complex Analysis; in these fields the most known researchers have been A. Tognoli and A. Silva.

During the nineties some members of the Department have devoted more attention to the applications of Mathematics; more specifically, a group is working in Stochastic Partial Differential Equations, another in numerical approximation of partial differential equations and a third one in mathematical modelling in population dynamics.

During the last fifteen years, the Department has also organized a Ph.D. program, offering four/five positions each year. The presence of young researchers has given an important contribution to the activity of the Department, and the Ph.D. program will be possibly reinforced in the future.

Finally, a further objective of the Department is the promotion of mathematical knowledge, especially in interaction with the school sytem.