Adtones intelligently tailors mobile ads to users in developing countries and shares the revenue with them to subsidize their phone bills.

Adtones

Boston Consulting Group is a management consulting firm that advises businesses and organizations on strategy, transformation and growth.

Boston  Consulting Group

The BCG Henderson Institute applies insights from academic disciplines to the strategic challenges facing business, government and society.

BCG Henderson Institute

Cancer Research UK supports scientific and medical research to help beat cancer sooner. It is the world's largest cancer research charity.

Cancer Research UK

The Centre for Defence Enterprise funds research that could lead to a capability advantage for the armed forces and national security.

Centre for  Defence Enterprise

The U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency makes pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies that benefit national security.

Defence Advanced  Research Projects Agency

The U.S. Defence Threat Reduction Agency funds research to prepare for and combat weapons of mass destruction and improvised threats. 

Defence Threat  Reduction Agency

The European Innovation Council funds world-class scientists and innovators to develop and accelerate disruptive technology businesses.

European  Innovation Council

Framework Programme 7 was created by the European Commission to fund scientific research and innovation in Europe and associated countries.

Framework Programme 7

The Garfield Weston Foundation supports a range of charities across the UK and the restoration and redevelopment of their buildings.

Garfield Weston  Foundation

Horizon 2020 was created by the European Commission to fund scientific research and innovation across Europe and other member countries.

Horizon 2020

Invenia is a company of scientists and engineers that uses machine learning to optimize complex decision making and reduce inefficiencies.

Invenia Labs

LIMS Ventures is the start-up incubator of the London Institute which accelerates projects with potential for widespread commercialization.

LIMS Ventures

The Medical Research Council, one of the seven UK Research Councils, supports basic and applied medical research throughout the UK.

Medical Research Council

The U.S. Office of Naval Research supports basic research and technology for future naval power and the preservation of national security.

Office of  Naval Research

The Pilgrim Trust supports the preservation of architecturally important buildings and historically significant artifacts and documents.

Pilgrim Trust

The Porter Foundation supports projects in education, the environment, culture, health and welfare that encourage excellence and innovation.

Porter Foundation

The Rose Foundation provides financial assistance to charities undertaking building restoration and development in and around London.

Rose Foundation

The Edward Harvist Trust supports organisations that improve the quality of life for local people in Westminster and other London boroughs.

Edward Harvist Trust

The European Commission Migration and Home Affairs supports research to ensure the security of the EU and cooperation with non-EU countries.

European Commission  Migration and Home Affairs

The London Institute for Mathematical Sciences

In The Spectator, the London Institute talks about the value of basic science and what the British government should do to promote it.

Back to basics

Developing a theory of high-dimensional statistical inference using analytic tools from the statistical physics of disordered systems.

High-dimensional inference

Scientists discuss the potential of mathematical modelling in biology across problems in cell programming, immunology and gene regulation.

Modelling biology

Predicting the behaviour of graphs and processes on them by treating topological patterns as constraints on a random graph ensemble.

Intelligence of graphs

The London Institute and many of its papers have featured in the popular and scientific press. Our new Press section tells the story.

Fit to print

100 days in, our Twitter feed keeps you up to date on our papers, projects, events, press coverage and the shape of basic science in the UK.

100 days of Twitter

In Science Business, the London Institute welcomes the prospect of a UK DARPA and calls for faster funding schemes to support bold ideas.

Science post-Brexit

As well as research, we create games, build startups, invent traditions and develop tools for research and design—described in Diversions.

Diversions

Physicists and mathematicians discuss quantitative models of group dynamics and emergent behaviour on 30 Jan from 6:30 pm. All welcome.

Collective behaviour

Our new About section sets out the London Institute’s purpose and describes how it is curiosity-driven, collegiate and competitive.

New About section

The imaginary replica method provides a new approach for calculating the spectral properties of an ensemble of random regular loopy graphs.

Imaginary replica analysis

Recursively divisible numbers are a new kind of number that are highly divisible, whose quotients are highly divisible, and so on. 

Recursively divisible nos.

We optimize Bayesian data clustering by mapping the problem to the statistical physics of a gas and calculating the lowest entropy state.

Replica clustering

A theoretical model of recursive innovation suggests that new technologies are recursively built up from new combinations of existing ones.

Recursive innovation

In Open Access Government, the London Institute argues that Britain’s record of scientific leadership will continue regardless of Brexit.

Science and Brexit

A dinner and discussion about collective imagination, strategies for acting on multiple timescales and how to respond to distant threats.

Science of Business IV

A phase transition creates the geometry of the continuum from discrete space, but it needs disorder if it is to have the right metric.

Geometry of discrete space

On 2 Sep at 6pm, Marc Warner talks about how to manage the safety of embedded artificial intelligence in our Science and Society series.

How to keep AI safe

We’ve captured the inside and outside of our building in a series of photographs which shows off the extensive renovation of the Institute.

Building in pictures

Creating discrete models of space and spacetime that appear continuous over long lengths and set the stage for non-continuum physics.

Discrete geometry

An overview of our past and present seminars, symposia, business dinners and other events can be found in our new Events page.

Events

Our research projects range from AI to materials to finance to cosmology. An overview of all of them is shown in our new Projects page.

Projects

At our 3rd Science of Business dinner we discuss innovation, technological change and new ways to combat climate change.

Business dinner

By tracking the tags of our research papers in real time, we provide a comprehensive overview of what we are working on and what’s new.

Research interests

In the Times Higher Education magazine, the London Institute argues that “We need to challenge the university monopoly on research”.

LIMS in THE

Understanding collective creativity: anonymous collaboration under constrained freedom that transcends the creativity of the individual.

Collective creativity

The London Institute has been awarded Independent Research Organization status and can now compete for £7bn of annual government funding.

Becoming an IRO

The distribution of product complexity helps explain why some technology sectors tend to exhibit faster innovation rates than others.

Faster innovation

A simple solvable model of memristive networks suggests an analogy between the asymptotic states of memristors and the Ising model.

Memristive networks

Sir John Beddington joins the Institute’s board of trustees, bringing experience in sustainability, science policy and scientific ventures.

New Trustee

Statistical physics harnesses links between maximum entropy and information theory to capture null model and real-world network features.

Network physics

Sir Roy Anderson joins the Institute’s board of trustees, bringing experience in defence, governance and mathematical bio-medicine.

You can help determine the most important research to advance. Any funds that you give for a project will be spent entirely on that project.

Kickscience

The mean dissipated work is proportional to a relative entropy between probability distributions over all possible values of work.

One-shot statistics

The distributions of size and shape of a material’s grains can be constructed from a 2D slice of the material and electron diffraction data.

Materials inference

A dinner and discussion about speeding up innovation, forecasting technological change and the collective action problem in climate change.

Science of Business III

The Institute’s Christmas Party continued into the small hours as members served their local delicacies and held a Meccano competition.

Christmas goes crackers

A dinner and discussion about commitment and flexibility, acting on multiple timescales and learning and forgetting in the age of AI.

Science of Business II

Thomas Fink barbeques a Texan lunch in the popular seminar room fireplace as the London Institute celebrates American Independence Day. 

Independence Day BBQ

A dinner and discussion about applying principles from evolution and ecology to seemingly intractable problems in business and politics.

Science of Business I 

Scientists and businessmen discuss the use of blockchain technologies across cryptocurrencies, commerce and the analysis of private data.

Future of blockchain

Leaders in intelligence, defence, business and academia discuss the technology behind ransomware and the cryptocurrencies that fund it.

Ransomware

Physicists and neuroscientists and discuss how artificial neural networks can shed light on the working of their biological counterparts.

Neuroscience and AI

Reconstructing the 3D shape distribution of grains or other objects randomly packed together with access only to 2d slices  through them.

Dimension reconstruction

Creating a mathematical model of combinatorial innovation to understand how innovation rates can be influenced as components are acquired.

Structure of innovation

Designing optimal self-similar structures for compact counter-current heat exchangers to reduce heating costs and greenhouse emissions.

Fractal heat exchange

Charles Epstein talks about the longstanding fractious but fruitful relationship between pure mathematics and mathematical physics. 

Mathematics vs physics

Robin Ball talks about a theoretical model of fibers in which their elasticity and curliness produce the characteristic shape of a ponytail.

Ponytail physics

Understanding the physical nature of information and how it relates to energy transfer and new technologies that make use of these insights. 

Information physics

Exploring the spectral properties of subgraphs of the hypercube and Hamming graphs for insights into coding theory and models of evolution.

Hypercube geometry

Doyne Farmer talks about what technology is and how it evolves and our improving ability to forecast technological change into the future. 

Evolution of technology

Tiziana Di Matteo talks about the interdependence of multifractal financial time series and a new way to understand and forecast them.

Multifractal finance

Mark Girolami talks about how information, inference and data analysis drives the digital revolution in part 7 of our Grand Tour of Science. 

Science of information

Neil Lambert talks about subatomic particles and the elusive search for a theory of everything in part 6 of our Grand Tour of Science.

High energy physics

Brian Sutton talks about the path to understanding life, molecular biology and synthetic biology in part 5 of our Grand Tour of Science.

DNA and the genome

Chris Pickard talks about how Nature’s mysterious non-determinism is captured by quantum mechanics in part 4 of our Grand Tour of Science. 

Quantum theory 

Vittorio Loreto talks about the dynamics of correlated novelties in the evolution of biological systems, human society and technology.

Correlated novelties

Andrew Green talks about the theory of relativity, cosmology and the structure of the universe in part 3 of our Grand Tour of Science.

Relativity and cosmology

Thomas Fink talks about radical new mathematical developments that set the stage for modern physics in part 2 of our Grand Tour of Science. 

Revolutions in maths 

Rob Farr talks about the physics of architecture and how self-similar mechanical structures can make seemingly impossible designs a reality.

Classical science

Investigating the adverse effects of information asymmetry and deliberate errors in social media and the press and attempts to remedy them.

News and fake news in a connected world

Modern medicine can access vast amounts of patient-specific data, such as individual genomes, blood bio-markers and medical images. But it fails to use this information effectively. Analysing next-generation data with previous-generation tools causes avoidable patient harm, misses clues to new treatments and contributes to the high failure rate of clinical trials.
In this project we create more powerful mathematical methods for predicting disease outcomes. Most present-day mathematical and machine learning methods have a common Achilles heel. When the amount of information becomes too large, they confuse real patterns with noise and miss the wood for the trees—a breakdown known as overfitting. Our approach to bypassing this is founded on treating topological patterns in medical data as constraints on a random graph ensemble.
More accurate clinical prediction reduces the likelihood of harmful, ineffective treatments and saves lives. Each doomed trial that gets stopped early by better analysis of preliminary data saves over £100m for health services and the drug industry. And rescuing failing trials by identifying appropriate drug recipients broadens the range of available drugs.

Creating powerful mathematical methods for predicting the outcomes of diseases that pinpoint the right treatments and speed up drug trials.

Mathematics for personalized medicine

Technologies, such as touch screens, PCR and GPS, are made up of component building blocks. But when a technology is sufficiently common, it is given a name and used as a component in its own right. In this way technologies are made up of more primitive technologies in a hierarchical way. For instance, the components of GPS are satellites, atomic clocks and receivers. GPS is also a component in subsequent technologies, such as guided missiles and earthquake monitors.
In this project we develop a statistical physics model of recursive innovation in which technologies can become building blocks for new technologies. Our hypothesis is that innovation in the present proceeds in such a way as to increase the likelihood of innovating in the future. To the extent that it does not, it offers the possibility of speeding up the process by intervening.
Man’s capacity to innovate is at the heart of technological change and drives economic growth. A theory of recursive innovation will help identify opportunities for governments, firms and funders to increase the rate of innovation by making specific interventions, tailored to different sectors. It will also provide researchers in technology and engineering a quantitative basis for their design decisions.

Developing a statistical physics model of recursive innovation in which technologies become the building blocks for new technologies.

Is technology a machine for creating itself?

Bootstrap percolation originated as a simple cellular automata model of the spread of infection. Given a set of initially infected sites, in consecutive rounds sites become infected if they satisfy a certain infection rule, for example, more than a given number of their neighbours are infected. Percolation occurs if every node is eventually infected.
In this project we investigate the typical and extremal properties of bootstrap percolation for various infection rules and underlying networks. For sites that are initially randomly infected, we study the critical density of infection that leads to percolation. Alternatively, if the initial infected sites are set by hand, we study how many infected nodes are necessary to infect the whole network.
Bootstrap percolation can be used to model many real-life phenomena, such as pandemics, computer network failure, ferromagnetic behaviour, the spread of voting preferences and information processing in neural networks. A better mathematical theory will help us understand these processes and draw reliable conclusions well beyond what can be achieved through computer simulations.

Advancing the mathematical theory of bootstrap percolation, where active cells on a lattice with few active neighbours cease to be active.

Leaps in long-range connectivity

Understanding the dynamics of memristor networks, a new approach to low-power computation inspired by the structure of the brain.

Is technology a machine for creating itself?

The London Institute for Mathematical Sciences gives scientists the freedom and support to make fundamental discoveries.

Press

Back to basics

Projects

High-dimensional inference

Events

Modelling biology

Projects

Intelligence of graphs

Where we publish

Who's funding us