Network Spotlight on Frame Theory: the Mathematical Foundation for Acoustics, Quantum Physics, Numerics and Machine Learning
The most recent IT:U Network Spotlight showcased how mathematics provides the backbone for a wide range of scientific and technological advances. Fellow Professor Peter Balazs introduced frame theory—a mathematical framework that not only deepens theoretical understanding but also powers applications in fields such as acoustics, quantum physics, numerical modeling, and machine learning.
Exploring Frame Theory – Fellow Prof. Peter Balazs
In his keynote, Prof. Balazs gave a comprehensive overview of frame theory and explained how this mathematical concept connects across multiple disciplines. He introduced its basic principles and showed how they can be translated into practical tools and methods.
He highlighted examples ranging from quantum physics, where frames link to coherent states, to signal processing, where frame multipliers act as time-variant filters. Frames also play a role in FEM/BEM for numerical simulations, in acoustics through challenges like audio inpainting, and in machine learning with learned filterbanks that enhance denoising and speech quality.
This research direction will open doors for real-life applications such as:
- Various applications in acoustics like speech enhancement or denoising.
- Detection, classification and generation of (natural) vocalizations for humans or other animals, thereby going one step towards understanding their way of communication.
- Theory for deep neural networks, understand them on a mathematical level, and thereby making a step towards interpretability.
My vision is bridging (deep theoretical) mathematics to more applied scientific topics. I am passionately committed to application-oriented mathematics for acoustics, signal-processing and machine learning. This allows the full usage of mathematical rigor and controllability of parameters for models and methods in the applied sciences on one hand. On the other hand, this creates new mathematical topics and concepts, raises novel questions within mathematics that are interesting and inspiring per-se”
Peter Balazs, IT:U Fellow Professor of Acoustics, Analysis, and AI
About the Network Spotlight
The Network Spotlight at IT:U is designed to open up the work of our Fellows to a wider audience, highlighting innovative research that thrives on interdisciplinarity. It also underlines IT:U’s role as a Network University—linking researchers, innovators, and thought leaders to exchange perspectives and spark new collaborations.
📅 Save the date: The next Network Spotlight takes place on 28th October — more details coming soon!