I am a theoretical condensed matter physicist working on strongly correlated quantum materials. I combine ab initio electronic structure calculations, effective low-energy models and many-body methods to compute transport and spectroscopic properties accurately enough for quantitative comparison with experiment — from the anomalous c-axis resistivity of Sr₂RuO₄ to the microscopic origin of the cuprate pseudogap. Much of this work is done in close collaboration with experimental groups.
Most recently I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Alessandro Toschi's group at TU Wien, on a project I proposed and secured the funding for. Before that I was an Associate Research Scientist and Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics. I obtained my Ph.D. in Materials Science from ETH Zurich, where I worked under the supervision of Prof. Claude Ederer.
Beyond research, I am passionate about open-source research software - I contribute to multiple open-source software projects, serve as an editor for the Journal of Open Source Software, and have an interest in data visualization and illustration. Download my CV here or read about my work in this Spotlight article.

Research highlights

Connection to experiment

A recurring theme in my work is computing observables accurately enough that they can be held against measurements directly, without adjustable parameters. This has led to close and long-running collaborations with experimental groups — among them work on angle-resolved photoemission in the correlated metal Sr₂RuO₄ with the groups of A. Tamai and F. Baumberger in Geneva, and on the anomalous out-of-plane resistivity of layered oxides. A joint project with the group of Lior Kornblum at the Technion on correlated transparent conductors is currently in preparation.

Precision many-body methods

While the properties of conventional materials can be described adequately within frameworks like density functional theory, strongly correlated materials often require a more demanding treatment within a many-body framework such as dynamical mean-field theory. Capturing the electronic structure of quantum materials correctly is essential to gain insights into the fascinating physics and potential technological applications of e.g. phase transitions, high-temperature superconductivity, exotic magnetic ordering and Mott physics.

Functional materials

Oxide heterostructures consist of atomic layers of complex transition metal oxides whose properties often differ from those of the corresponding bulk compounds. They therefore offer the opportunity to develop "materials by design", where electronic properties are tailored to specific applications.

Tool building: web app FermiSee

We have recently developed a WebApp for data visualization and phenomenology of correlated electronic structure based on input obtained by Wannier90, and TRIQS. You can test FermiSee in your browser or checkout the git repo for more information and demos.

Spotlight: recent paper

In this recent publication we present an automatic, high-order accurate and adaptive Brillouin zone integration algorithm for the calculation of the optical conductivity using Wannier interpolation. We released an open-source software package AutoBZ.jl available for download implementing the corresponding algorithms in Julia as described in this JOSS paper.

Selected Papers

Software

I contribute to a number of open source software projects.

Contact