Prof. Dr. Rainer Grauer

Theoretical physics, especially plasma, laser and atomic physics

NB 7/123
Tel.: +49 234 32 23767

Research

The Chair of Computational Plasma Physics deals with the numerical simulation of magnetised plasmas and, in particular, the physical issues of magnetic reconnection and turbulence. The chair is the spokesperson of the research group FOR 1048 "Instabilities, Turbulence and Transport in Cosmic Magnetic Fields". The focus is on the cache-coherent implementation of block-structured adaptive grid refinement on massively parallel computer architectures such as BlueGene, the use of penalty methods for modelling complex geometries, the implementation of methods for highly compressible flows and Vlasov simulations on GPU clusters, as well as the development of theory for Eulerian and Lagrangian turbulence.

The person

Training

1976 - 1983	Studies at the University of Düsseldorf
1983	Diploma in Physics, University of Düsseldorf. Title: "MHD stability of tokamaks with elliptical cross-section with respect to axially symmetric disturbances".
1988	PhD in Physics, University of Düsseldorf. Title: "Interaction between tearing modes near a bifurcation point of codimension 2″.
1994	Habilitation in Physics, University of Düsseldorf. Title: "Singularities in ideal incompressible Flows with swirl".

Professional career

1983 - 1988	Research assistant at the University of Düsseldorf
1988 - 1989	Postdoctoral position at the Observatoire de Nice (CNRS, 1 year)
1989 - 1990	Postdoctoral position at the Dept. of Math., UC Santa Barbara (DFG, 1.5 years)
1990 - 1998	Research assistant at the University of Düsseldorf
1998 - 2000	Senior Assistant at the University of Düsseldorf
since 2000	C4 Professor, Theoretical Physics (Ruhr University Bochum)
2002	Co-organiser of the DPG Spring Conference on Plasma Physics in Bochum
since 2003	Member of the Board of Directors of the Computing Centre of the Ruhr University Bochum
since 2007	Spokesperson of the user groups of the "Simulation Laboratory Plasma Physics", FZ Jülich, Bochum, Düsseldorf, Aachen
March 2008	Organiser (together with PD Dr. H. Fichtner) of the "Computational Methods in Astrophysics" school
since 2008	Spokesperson of the research group FOR 1048
february 2010	Organiser (together with Prof. Dr. R.J. Dettmar, PD Dr. H. Fichtner) of the school "MHD Dynamos in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas".

Awards

1992	Bennigsen Promotion Prize (DM 100,000)
2001	Intel/HP IPF Award (DM 60,000)
2009	XXL Project Award: 60 million BlueGene CPU hours

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