About
I am a computational astrophysicist studying structure formation across a wide range of scales — from the cosmic web during reionization to the small-scale physics of star formation, protoplanetary disks, and accretion flows.
As principal investigator of the Lumina project, I lead an effort to model cosmic reionization and the formation of the first galaxies with the moving-mesh code AREPO. In parallel, I work on self-interacting dark matter, non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics, and accretion-disk physics. I also develop the numerical methods and GPU-accelerated algorithms needed to carry out these simulations on exascale supercomputers.
Before joining Harvard, I was a postdoctoral researcher with Mark Vogelsberger at MIT. I earned a PhD in physics from LMU Munich in 2023 after conducting my doctoral research with Volker Springel at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. My doctoral work focused on protoplanetary-disk simulations and improvements to the AREPO and GADGET-4 codes.
My academic background spans physics and computer science at the University of Bayreuth and the Theoretical and Mathematical Physics program at LMU Munich and the Technical University of Munich. I am originally from Wunsiedel in northern Bavaria.
Recent
Papers, projects, and milestones.
- Paper
New AREPO-2 SIDM implementation presented
A scalable Monte Carlo solver with a dedicated dark-matter tree, support for velocity-dependent and inelastic interactions, and substantially better performance than the previous AREPO implementation.
- Paper
New Lumina results on intergalactic clumping
The study quantifies how ionized-gas structure and temperature shape recombination sinks during reionization.
- Paper
Lumina introduction paper submitted
The flagship paper introducing the Lumina project — large-volume radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of hydrogen and helium reionization — is now on arXiv.
- Paper
Two first-author reionization papers published in MNRAS
Population III star formation continues through reionization; long-term imprints of external reionization on galaxy evolution.
- Position
Started as an ITC Fellow at Harvard & Smithsonian CfA
Leading the Lumina simulation project on cosmic reionization and high-redshift galaxy formation.
- Paper
GPU-accelerated AREPO-RT published in MNRAS
A GPU-accelerated, exascale-oriented implementation of the AREPO radiation-transport module.
- Award
Awarded the Otto Hahn Medal
Given by the Max Planck Society to a small number of doctoral graduates each year for outstanding research during their PhD.