Jānis Lazovskis Hello, I am a mathematician living in Riga, Latvia, working in applied topology though a Latvian Council of Science grant hosted at the Institute of Clinical and Preventive Medicine at the University of Latvia. My work is in algebraic topology and topological data analysis with a focus on dynamic environments, applications to biology and mathematical neuroscience, visualizations and mathematics education. I also provide consulting services in data science, in particular for anna app, and involve myself in community organizations, including the Latvian youth seminars 2x2.
My university web page is here, and my grant webpage is here. I am open to supervising bachelors, masters, and PhD students, you can reach me at the contact info at the bottom of this page. Previously I have mentored bachelors students in the CSOT (formerly BITL) program at RTU Riga Business School (full list here).
I support the Cost of Knowledge project and the Leiden declaration on AI and mathematics. I do not submit manuscripts to or perform review services for journals published by MDPI (for their predatory practices), Elsevier (for their financial pressuring), or the Association for Mathematical Research (for their reactionary principles).
Publications
Most of my research projects fall under the broad umbrella of "dynamic applied topology," with current work in topological algorithms for persistent homology, and applications of topological data analysis. I have closely worked with the Neuro-Topology group at Aberdeen and the Blue Brain Project at EPFL. My publications in the broader context of my research are on my research page.
preprint 2026-05-31: A constructive proof for the simple connectedness of finite subset spaces, Jānis Lazovskis (arxiv)
journal article 2026-05-28: The Evolution of Hutchinsonian Climatic Niche Hypervolumes in Gymnosperms, Fernanda S. Caron, Jānis Lazovskis, David F. R. P. Burslem, Juliano Morimoto . Published in Global Ecology and Biogeography (journal)
journal article 2026-03-23: Pruning vineyards: updating barcodes and representative cycles by removing simplices, Barbara Giunti, Jānis Lazovskis. Published in Foundations of Data Science (journal, arxiv, video, software "SiRUP")
preprint 2025-12-03: Stability of 0-dimensional persistent homology in enriched and sparsified point clouds, Jānis Lazovskis, Ran Levi, Juliano Morimoto (arxiv, software "TopoAware")
journal article 2025-01-17: Heterogeneous and non-random cortical connectivity undergirds efficient, robust and reliable neural codes, Daniela Egas Santander, Christoph Pokorny, András Ecker, Jānis Lazovskis, Matteo Santoro, Jason P. Smith, Kathryn Hess, Ran Levi, Michael W. Reimann. Published in iScience (journal, biorxiv, software "Connectome analysis")
journal article 2024-11-26: Modeling and Simulation of Rat Non-Barrel Somatosensory Cortex. Part I: Modeling Anatomy, Michael W. Reimann, Sirio Bolaños-Puchet, Daniela Egas Santander, András Ecker, Jānis Lazovskis, Cristoph Pokorny, Jason P. Smith, Vishal Sood, Ran Levi, Kathryn Hess, Henry Markram, and others. Published in eLife Neuroscience (journal, biorxiv)
journal article 2024-11-01: DONUT - Creation, development, and opportunities of a database,Barbara Giunti, Jānis Lazovskis, Bastian Rieck. Published in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (journal, arxiv, database)
conference publication 2023-12-22: Combinatorial Exploration of Morse–Smale Functions on the Sphere via Interactive Visualization, Youjia Zhou, Janis Lazovskis, Michael J. Catanzaro, Matthew Zabka, Bei Wang. Published in Topological Data Analysis and Visualization 2023 (proceedings, arxiv, software "MSF Designer")
journal article 2022-06-01: An application of neighbourhoods in digraphs to the classification of binary dynamics, Pedro Conceição, Dejan Govc, Jānis Lazovskis, Ran Levi, Henri Riihimäki, Jason P. Smith. Published in Network Neuroscience (journal, arxiv, software "TriDy")
journal article 2022-01-12: Topology of synaptic connectivity constrains neuronal stimulus representation, predicting two complementary coding strategies, Michael W. Reimann, Henri Riihimäki, Jason P. Smith, Jānis Lazovskis, Christoph Pokorny, Ran Levi. Published in PLOS ONE (journal, biorxiv)
journal article 2021-06-11: Stratifications on the Ran space, Jānis Lazovskis. Published in Order (journal, arxiv)
journal article 2020-06-27: Moduli spaces of morse functions for persistence, Michael J. Catanzaro, Justin Curry, Brittany Terese Fasy, Jānis Lazovskis, Greg Malen, Hans Riess, Bei Wang, Matthew Zabka. Published in Journal of Applied and Computational Topology (journal, arxiv)
phd thesis 2019-08-01: Stability of universal constructions for persistent homology, Jānis Lazovskis, advised by Ben Antieau and Shmuel Weinberger. Defended at the University of Illinois at Chicago (PhD thesis, local copy)
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Events
Upcoming and past events. See my research page fort these same events arranged by theme. Talks since 2019, and talks from 2014-2019.
seminar talk 2026-10-21: Applied Algebraic Topology Research Network seminar (site)
conference talk 2026-08-31: Stratifying and contracting finite subset spaces, Stratifying Kiel workshop (site)
University of Waterloo:lecture notes and talks from undergraduate and masters studies
Contact and links
I can be reached via email (in Latvian or English) at janis (dot) lazovskis (at) lu (dot) lv . My office address is Latvijas Universitāte, Jelgavas iela 3-311, Rīga LV-1004, Latvia.
