Prize Recipient

Tobias Dornheim
Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)

"For developing Monte Carlo methods that overcome the fermion sign problem, leading to the first ab initio data for an electron gas under warm dense matter conditions."

Tobias Dornheim received his MS and PhD in physics from the Christian-Albrechts university in Kiel, Germany, in 2014 and 2018, respectively. In 2019, he has joined the Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) as a postdoctoral researcher in the field of matter under extreme conditions. Tobias’ research interests include the development and application of large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations of degenerate fermions, with a particular focus on the description of electrons in the warm dense matter regime. In addition, he is working on the representation of exchange—correlation functionals for density functional theory simulations and related applications, and on the interpretation of X-ray Thomson scattering (XRTS) signals. Tobias has been awarded the faculty prize of Kiel university for the best PhD thesis in the mathematical and natural sciences in 2019, the nanophysics PhD award of Kinsis in 2019, and the U30 Doctoral Scientist Award of the Plasma Physics Division of the Association of Asian-Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS) in 2018.

William Farmer (Chair), Howard Milchberg (Vice Chair), Will Fox ('20 recipient), Radha Bahukutumbi, Matt Landreman