Rate My Professor Karl Ziems

Dr Karl Michael Ziems is a Lecturer in Computational Chemistry at the University of Southampton. He studied chemistry at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany and theoretical chemistry at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He obtained his PhD in theoretical chemical physics from the Max Planck School of Photonics in Germany, with a thesis titled “High-frequency light-matter interaction in atoms and molecules” focused on ultrafast nuclear and electron dynamics, attosecond science and femtochemistry.

Prior to his current role, which he assumed in January 2025, Dr Ziems worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Denmark on the project “Hybrid Quantum Chemistry on Hybrid Quantum Computers.” He also held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on computational chemistry and quantum computing, including algorithm development, ultrafast dynamics, quantum chemistry, and the study of nuclear and electron dynamics in photochemistry and attosecond science. Key publications include “Understanding and mitigating noise in molecular quantum linear response for spectroscopic properties on quantum computers” published in Chemical Science in 2025, “Attosecond core-level absorption spectroscopy reveals the electronic and nuclear dynamics of molecular ring opening” in Nature Photonics in 2024, “Which Options Exist for NISQ-Friendly Linear Response Formulations?” in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation in 2023, and “Reduced Density Matrix Formulation of Quantum Linear Response” in the same journal in 2024. Dr Ziems is accepting applications from prospective PhD students.