a picture of me, smiling

Will J. Turner

Research

I am a research assistant and doctoral candidate at TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Sachsen. A link to my group's webpage can be found here. I am in the structural combinatorics team headed by Prof. Johannes Carmesin.

Current research interests

Topological combinatorics. This includes planar graph theory as well as embeddability-theory of higher-dimensional analogues.
Connectivity theory and decomposing graph-like structures. Finding and using canonical ways to break down combinatorial objects.
Matroids arising from graphs. This includes theory of graphic matroids as well as some surrounding theory.
I often combine the above with complexity theory and sometimes category theory.

Ongoing collaborations

I am working with Prof. Johannes Carmesin on generalising planar graph theory to certain sequences of graphs.
I am working with Dr Benjamin Merlin Bumpus to lift results from graph theory to more general categorical settings.

Papers

A graph minors approach to temporal sequences Johannes Carmesin, Will J. Turner
preprint April 2025 arxiv
Pushing tree decompositions along graph homomorphisms Benjamin Merlin Bumpus, James Fairbanks, Will J. Turner
preprint August 2024 arxiv
Towards a Stallings-type theorem for finite groups Johannes Carmesin, Jan Kurkofka, George Kontogeorgiou, Will J. Turner
preprint March 2024 arxiv

Upcoming talks

Invited Minisymposium: Matroid Theory
CanaDAM - U Ottowa
22nd May 2025

Selected talks

A graph minors approach to temporal sequences
Forschungsseminare - U Hamburg
29th Apr 2025
Coloured matroid reconstruction: part 2
Research Seminar DMA - TU Freiberg
06th Nov 2024
Coloured matroid reconstruction: part 1
Research Seminar DMA - TU Freiberg
30th Oct 2024
Towards a Stallings-type theorem for finite groups: part 2
Research Seminar DMA - TU Freiberg
03rd Jul 2024
Towards a Stallings-type theorem for finite groups: part 1
Research Seminar DMA - TU Freiberg
22nd May 2024
A forbidden substructure characterisation of temporal planarity
Combinatorics Seminar - University of Warwick
23nd Feb 2024
Forbidden Spiders: a forbidden substructure characterisation of temporal planarity
Combinatorics Seminar - University of Birmingham
12th Oct 2023
Local separators of Cayley graphs
QTMC Conference - Queen Mary University London
07th Jul 2023
What on earth is a matroid: A journey through topological graph theory to Rota's conjecture
Pure Détour - University of Birmingham
21st Apr 2023
Local separators of Cayley graphs
Postgraduate Combinatorics Conference - University of Birmingham
29th Mar 2023

Demonstrating

Komplexitätstheorie exercise classes
TU Freiberg
Summer 2025
Algorithmic Graph Theory 2 exercise classes
TU Freiberg
Summer 2025
Algorithmic Geometry exercise classes
TU Freiberg
Winter 2024
Algorithmics exercise classes
TU Freiberg
Summer 2024
a painting of a forest pool