Doctoral Programme Dynamics of Complex Continua (DP DOCC)

The Applied Mathematics Group of Markus Haltmeier at the Department of Mathematics performs interdisciplinary research in the fields of inverse problems, parameter estimation and signal and image processing. Thereby the group focuses on a balance between theoretical analysis and the development of algorithms, which can be applied to real-world applications.

Matthias Harders is professor at the Department of Computer Science. In February 2014 he established the Interactive Graphics and Simulation (IGS) group at the University of Innsbruck. The scientific focus of the group is on methods and algorithms in the areas of physically-based simulation, computer haptics and virtual/augmented reality. Further research addresses human-computer interaction and multi-modal data visualisation. The main application area of the developments has so far been in the medical domain.

Günter Hofstetter is dean of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences and head of the Unit of Strength of Materials and Structural Analysis at the Institute of Basic Sciences in Engineering Science at the University of Innsbruck. The focus of the scientific activities of Günter Hofstetter and his group is on basic and applied research in the fields of structural analysis and strength of materials, and of numerical methods related to these areas. Main emphasis is laid on the development and application of models for numerical simulation of the load-carrying behaviour of structures up to failure and on validation of these models by experimental methods.

In particular, the scientific contributions comprise

• numerical modelling of the nonlinear material behaviour of concrete and of concrete structures, complemented by experimental investigations for validating numerical models,
• experimental investigation and numerical simulation of rehabilitation and strengthening measures of existing concrete structures by adding concrete overlays,
• numerical modelling of the nonlinear material behaviour of intact rock and of rock mass aiming at numerical simulations of the excavation of deep tunnels,
• numerical modelling of partially saturated soils targeted on numerical simulations of geotechnical problems in the framework of multi-phase formulations and,
• technology transfer of research results for solving demanding problems in engineering practice.

Alexander Kendl is Associate Professor at the Institute for Ion Physics and Applied Physics at the University of Innsbruck. His research interests are in nonlinear dynamics, turbulence and structure formation, plasma physics and fusion research, and computational physics.

Associated Professor Ralf Kissmann leads the computational astroparticle phyics group at the Institute of Astrophysics. His research interests are in the modelling of different astrophysical systems relevant for the acceleration of high-energy cosmic rays. In particular he is working on:

• numerical simulations of cosmic ray transport
• numerical modelling of astrophysical fluids
• the combination of the above topics in a single simulation framework.

In this context there are two numerical codes currently developed in the group: the Picard code for the investigation of cosmic-ray transport and the Cronos code for simulation of (magneto-) hydrodynamical fluids.

Roman Lackner is head of the Unit of Material Technology at the Institute for Construction and Material Science at the University of Innsbruck. The focus of the scientific activities of Roman Lackner and his group is on basic and applied research in the field of material mechanics, especially within the framework of multiscale modeling. In particular, the scientific contributions comprise,

• experimental characterization of the material's behavior at different length scales (Roman Lackner is head of the NanoLab at the University of Innsbruck)
• homogenization techniques for upscaling physical material properties involving both analytical and numerical methods
• material optimization both as regards the production process and the in-service performance
• durability analysis of materials when subjected to chemical/physical attack.

Klaus Liedl and his research group focus on the development and application of computational methods to rationalize and predict chemical and biochemical phenomena at a molecular level. This comprises scientific areas such as molecular dynamics simulations, quantum mechanical calculations and chemo- and bioinformatics. The group both develops molecular force fields and data analysis methods and applies existing methods to explain experimental results and to guide future experiments.

Alexander Ostermann is head of the Department of Mathematics, chair of the Numerical Analysis Group and head of the Research Area Scientific Computing. His research interests include numerical analysis and scientific computing, in particular: time integration of partial differential equations, exponential integrators, splitting methods, engineering mathematics, sensitivity analysis, and geometry.

Michael Probst is professor at the Institute for Ion Physics and Applied Physics at the University of Innsbruck. His Computational Chemistry and Molecular Physics group investigates properties and reactions of neutral and charged clusters and molecules. His fields of research are: elucidation of reaction mechanisms by combined quantum-(thermo)chemical and molecular dynamical calculations and simulations, visualisation methods, metastable anions, electro- and physical chemistry of electrolytes.

Wolfgang Rauch is professor at the Institute of Infrastructure Engineering. His research focus lies on smoothed particle hydrodynamics, which is an applied and established computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology in other disciplines (e.g. astrophysics), whereas the technology has currently not been applied in urban water engineering. Problematic issues are the large computational burden of the method and the numerical stability of the code in connection with multiphase problems.