Simon Barke was born in Germany where he studied physics. For a while, he lived in Moshi, Tanzania, and worked at different local schools and universities. Over the last decade, he has had the privilege to be involved in a number of exciting projects. He was a scientific monitor at the LIGO gravitational wave detector in Livingston, Louisiana. He got his PhD for research on low-frequency gravitational wave observatories in space at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Hannover, Germany, with a focus on inter-spacecraft frequency distribution for LISA, the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna by the European Space Agency. He then moved to the University of Florida where he conducted research at the Department of Physics on the detection mechanism for ALPS, a dark matter generator and detector that is under construction at the German Electron Synchrotron DESY (Hamburg, Germany). Currently Simon works at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering on the development of a LISA Charge Management device under NASA contract.
He also tried to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, plays online games, and cannot sing (at all).
Education
Doctor rerum naturalium (physics)
Teaching Interests
Limiting fundamental and technical noise sources for ground and space-based gravitational wave observatories
Research Interests
Ultra-low-frequency noise of custom and COTS devices (electronics, electro-optics, lasers), flight hardware development for space missions, mission concepts for future gravitational wave observatories
Wilmer Leal is a mathematician, chemist, and computer scientist whose research lies at the intersection of applied category theory, computational sheaf theory, dynamical systems, and control. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science (summa cum laude) in 2022 from Leipzig University and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, and holds B.Sc. degrees in Mathematics and Chemistry from the University of Pamplona. From 2023 to 2025, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Florida with joint appointments in Computer & Information Science & Engineering and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. His research develops categorical and sheaf-theoretic methods for compositional reasoning in networked and time-varying systems, with applications to dynamical systems, distributed computation, and nonlinear control. His work has appeared in journals including PNAS, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, and PLOS Complex Systems. Since January 2026, Dr. Leal has been a Research Scientist in the Nonlinear Controls and Robotics (NCR) Group within the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. His current research focuses on integrating category theory and computational sheaf methods with Lyapunov-based and learning-enabled control of complex nonlinear systems.
Research Interests
Applied Category Theory
Computational Sheaf Theory
Nonlinear Dynamical Systems
Networked and Distributed Systems
Compositional Modeling and Reasoning
Learning-Enabled and Lyapunov-Based Control
Topological and Geometric Methods for Data Analysis
Teaching Interests
Applied Category Theory for Engineering
Dynamical Systems and Control
Network Science and Complex Systems
Computational Sheaf Theory
Data Science and Scientific Computing
Publications
Leal, W., Bumpus, B. M., Nickel, J. K., García, J., Fairbanks, J., & Dixon, W. E. (2026). Time-Varying Data as Sheaves: An Invitation to Narratives. Submitted.
Bumpus, B. M., Leal, W., Karvonen, M., Simard, F., & Fairbanks, J. (2026). Towards a Unified Theory of Time-Varying Data. Applied Categorical Structures.
Leal, W., Llanos, E., Bernal, A., Jost, J., Stadler, P. F., & Restrepo, G. (2022). The expansion of chemical space in 1826 and in the 1840s prompted the convergence to the periodic system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Teich, M., Leal, W., & Jost, J. (2025). Diachronic data analysis supports and refines conceptual metaphor theory. PLOS Complex Systems.
Di Lavore, E., Leal, W., & de Paiva, V. (2025). Dialectica Petri Nets. Fundamenta Informaticae.
Llanos, E., Leal, W., Bernal, A., Jost, J., & Stadler, P. F. (2024). Are the chemical families still there? The formal structure of similarity of elements and its thermochemical domain. Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
Llanos, E., Leal, W., Luu, D. H., Jost, J., Stadler, P. F., & Restrepo, G. (2019). Exploration of the chemical space and its three historical regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Notable Awards
DAAD Doctoral Fellowship, German Academic Exchange Service (2017–2022)
Graduated summa cum laude, Leipzig University (2022)
Selected Participant, 71st Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (2022)
Selected Participant, American Mathematical Society Mathematics Research Communities (2022)
Selected Participant, Applied Category Theory Adjoint School, MIT (2020)
Benjamin Walker is an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Florida’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering PSSL Lab. He joined the PSSL team in 2025 after a year and a half working for NIST Boulder. He started his working career in the US Air Force as a Rescue Specialist in 1995. In 2007 Benjamin went part time in the Alaska Air National Guard to earn an Electrical Engineering degree at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. In 2012 he studied at Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, earning his PhD in 2019. His work at Thayer included polar robotics and automated glacial ground penetrating radar data processing during multiple field deployments to Greenland and Antarctica.
Professional Memberships and Fellowships
American Physical Society, Member