Welcome!
My name is Toon (a Dutch name, pronounced as /ton/). I am a mathematician with a profound interest in the intersection between computer science and mathematics. I love taking on challenges, these can be technical (like my PhD thesis which I defended successfully in June 2023), or more approachable (like the animations you can find below). Challenges allow me to explore mathematics and computer science and they also test my ability to solve problems or explain and visualize ideas clearly.
If you want to get to know me, let me give you a few suggestions:
- Take a look at my resume.
- I am not that skilled in keeping up with
social media , but do get in touch on GitHub, Twitter or LinkedIn. - Or better yet, if you want to talk, email me: toon.baeyens@gmail.com!
Most of my (free) time is spent by exploring new creative ideas. Besides physically making things (origami, 3D-printing, electronics, wood-working, sewing...), I also love bringing virtual ideas to life. Below you can find some of the projects I worked on the last few years. Some of these projects were for a special occasion, others were simply things I wanted to try. They all have in common that I tried to make them visually interesting and let them tell their story. They also share that they are mostly undocumented. If you have any questions: just email me!
I wish you the very best,
Toon Baeyens
Some of my projects
This application contains a collection of modern 'applets'. In numerical mathematics, many concepts are illustrated with the help of many out-dated applets. This is a modern view on these applets.
'Applets'
For Imaginary 2022 in Ghent, I developed some interactive applications to visualize fractals.
October 2022
Romeo: discover fractals
On this page you can search for your birthday, or any other series of at most six digits in the digits of π, e, φ or √2.
November 2021
Birthday in π
The roots of Littlewood polynomials yield surprising fractals. Here, we take a closer look at this image.
March 2021
Roots of Littlewood polynomials
For the online edition of the Day of Science 2020, I made some animations. These illustrate how natural phenomena can be simulated.
November 2020
Day of science 2020
Maxwell's equations (in particular Gauss' law) are used to simulate magnetism. Here a finite-element method is used to calculate solutions to these equations.
October 2020
Magnetism
The 2020 poster of the Flemish Mathematics Olympiad (VWO) has an accompanying interactive page. Geodesics can be discovered by only walking in a straight line.
July 2019
VWO poster
For the SciCADE conference in Iceland, I presented a talk about our new mathematical results.
June 2022
Presentation for SciCADE 2022
For the Day of Science 2019, I presented a talk about hyperbolic geometry. These are the slides.
November 2019
Hyperbolic geometry in VR - slides
For Pint of Science in Sint-Niklaas, I gave a presentation about the unexpected beauty in mathematics. These slides were used for my talk about finding roots of complex functions.
May 2019
Pint of Science 2019
To celebrate 200 years of Ghent University, I made some interactive applications to visualize differential equations: geodesics, the Lorentz attractor and the heat equation.
October 2017
Differential equations
To celebrate 200 years of Ghent University, I made visualized some fractals: convergence basins of Newton's method for complex functions, Julia's fractals and the classical Mandelbrot.
October 2017
Fractalen
The convergence basins of Newton's method yield beautiful fractals. These are even more impressive when they are animated.
March 2019
Newton-Raphson
The incomprehensible computational power of a GPU is illustrated by solving the wave equations.
December 2018
The wave equation
For the NEPA (numerics for evolutive problems and applications) seminars, I gave a talk about how to determine the indices of eigenvalues of elliptic operators.
May 2021
Counting eigenvalues
If the roots of all Littlewood polynomials are plotted in the complex plane, a surprising image appears.
March 2019
Littlewood polynomials
A Lindenmayer system is a rewrite system and a kind of formal language. This application takes a look at several L-systems.
April 2019
Lindenmayer systems
This is a simulation of an experiment where a combination of milk, ink and soap can magically solve mazes.
December 2018
Marangoni flow
A practiced athlete can easily score a basketball. I have to settle for a simulation.
March 2018
Basket chaos