Adam Onus
Hello! I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the topological data analysis of lung and kidney cancer supervised by Prof Helen Byrne together with Dr Erik Sahai from the Francis Crick Institute. My project is funded by the Mark Foundation and I am based jointly between the Centre for Human Genetics and the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford.​
​
I recently defended my PhD thesis "Towards a Persistent Homology Theory for Periodic Cellular Complexes" supervised by Prof Primoz Skraba at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). ​Before this, I was a student of Vanessa Robins and Martin Helmer at the Australian National University (ANU).
​
See more: QMUL, ArXiv, Google Scholar, CV (correct as of 17th of July 2025)
Research Interests
Applied algebraic topology, Topological data analysis, Stochastic topology
​
"I like looking for holes in things"
My research is in (applied) algebraic topology and topological data analysis (TDA). The goal of TDA is to associate data with abstract topological spaces which in some way represent the "shape" of the data, and then using established tools from (algebraic) topology to quantify the shape of the data. My PhD work focused on how to use tools like cellular sheaves to calculate the (persistent) homology of infinite periodic data sets and their finite quotient spaces. My current work is aimed at using methods from TDA to study the spatial distribution (and evolution) of immune cells in lung and kidney cancers.
More generally, I enjoy not specialising in any one particular area. I enjoy finding applications of very pure mathematical objects (such as sheaves or spectral sequence) on real world data. I also enjoy looking at the intersections of different mathematical and non-mathematical fields, such as algebra, analysis, geometry, probability, biology (astro)physics and more.
​
Given different circumstances in my life, I could have also ended up working in operator algebras, complex analysis or even theoretical astrophysics or nuclear physics.
This is me presenting my work at the 2024 Workshop on Computational Persistence hosted at TU Graz
More About Me
In no particular order:
-
I am a firm believer in Federico Ardila's axioms of learning mathematics (see here).
-
My sister already has a PhD! She's much smarter than me and is a huge inspiration. She's a sport scientist/biologist, but I hope we can write a paper together one day.
-
On a Friday evening there is a probability of 1 that you will find me at a pub with my friends from QMUL.
-
I like knitting and crocheting mathematical objects.
-
I highly recommend Eugenia Cheng's X+Y as essential reading.
-
My proudest accomplishment is keeping my pothos plant alive long enough to get cuttings (twice!)
-
Ich lerne, Deutsch zu sprechen. Ich brauche doch viel Übung und Verbesserung, weil ich gar nicht fließend spreche. Ich finde es allerdings, großartig zu lernen.
QMUL maths PhD cohort - May 2025
Let’s Connect!
Feel free to email me at adi.onus@ludwig.ox.ac.uk
University of Oxford
Centre for Human Genetics, Nuffield Department of Medicine
Roosevelt Drive
Oxford OX3 7BN
adi (dot) onus (at) ludwig (dot) ox (dot) ac (dot) uk
