Dr. Nicola Botta

Senior Scientist

I am a senior scientist at PIK and adjunct professor (2019-2025) in the FP division, at the CSE Department, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. 

Department

Contact

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
T +49 (0)331 288 2657
Nicola.Botta[at]pik-potsdam.de
P.O. Box 60 12 03
14412 Potsdam

ORCID

I apply type theory, generic programming and program verification to climate science. I have active collaborations with M. Crucifix (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), P. Jansson, T.-M. Fülöp (Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden) and C. Ionescu (THD, Deggendorf, Germany). I am responsible for Theme 4 (Data and Decisions) and for part of work package 6 of the EU Horizon 2020 TiPES project. I am a developer of IdrisLibs and of the verified framework for sequential decision problems IdrisLibs/SequentialDecisionProblems. I have worked on agent based models of exchange economies with A. Mandel (CES, Paris, France) and on numerical methods for partial differential equations with R. Klein (FU-Berlin, Berlin, Germany). I have obtained a PhD from the Department of Engineering of the ETH Zürich.

In preparation:

  • Optimization under uncertainty. Nicola Botta, Patrik Jansson. 2024
  • Robust multi-objective optimization. Patrik Jansson et al. 2024

Recent submissions

  • Types, equations, dimensions and the Pi theorem. Nicola Botta et al. 2023, Journal of Functional Programming download.

Recent publications

  • How short-term policies affect humanity’s long-term scope of action. Marina Martínez Montero et al. Oxford Open Climate Change, 2024, download.
  • Extensional Equality Preservation in Intensional MLTT. Nuria Brede et al. Accepted contribution to the 29th International Conference on Types for Proofs and Programs, June 2023.
  • Perspectives on adaptive dynamical systems. Jakub Sawicki et al. Chaos, 2023 download.
  • Responsibility Under Uncertainty: Which Climate Decisions Matter Most? N. Botta, N. Brede, M. Crucifix, C. Ionescu, P. Jansson, Z. Li, M. Martínez-Montero, T. Richter. Environmental Modeling & Assessment, 2023 download.
  • ECOD: Unsupervised Outlier Detection Using Empirical Cumulative Distribution Functions. Zheng Li, Yue Zhao, Xiyang Hu, Nicola Botta, Cezar Ionescu, George Chen. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2022, download.
  • On the correctness of monadic backward induction. N. Brede, N. Botta. Journal of Functional Programming, Volume 31, 2021, download.
  • Extensional equality preservation and verified generic programming. N. Botta, N. Brede, P. Jansson, T. Richter. Journal of Functional Programming, Volume 31, 2021, download

Further publications:

  • I am a member of the COMET (Computational methods and visualization) unit and a developer of IdrisLibs.
  • I am responsible for Theme 4 (Data and Decisions) and for deliverables D6.1 and D6.2 of the EU Horizon 2020 TiPES project.
  • I am working with Patrik Jansson, Nick Smallbone (CSE, FP) and with the Plasma theory group at Chalmers University of Technology on the mitigation of runaway currents in tokamak fusion devices.

  • 2022: Four guest lectures on climate policy, mathematical specifications, dependent types and verified decision making at THD (Technische Hochschule Deggendorf), THD SS 2022.
  • 2022: Two guest lectures at Chalmers University of Technology Domain-Specific Languages of Mathematics.
  • Ongoing: Cartesian Seminar, see CS@uni-potsdam and CS@github.
  • 2019-2020: Introduction to functional languages and to dependently typed languages; theory of optimal decision making under uncertainty for finite horizon sequential decision problems; policy, policy sequences and value functions; optimality, viability and reachability; uncertainty measures and possible trajectories. Given at UCLouvain in Nov. 2019 (20 hours) and March 2020 (20 hours) as TiPES deliverable D6.1, regular lectures, extra lectures).

... for thought, in no particular order: