Rate My Professor Tobias Weinzierl

Tobias Weinzierl is Professor of High-Performance Computing in the Department of Computer Science at Durham University, where he leads the Scientific Computing research group and has served as Director of the Institute for Data Science since 2022. He earned his Diploma in Computer Science in 2005, Dr. rer. nat. (PhD) in 2009, and habilitation in 2016, all from the Technische Universität München, with theses focused on parallel PDE solvers on multiscale adaptive Cartesian grids and multiscale storage, parallelisation, and programming paradigms for spacetrees in scientific computing. His career trajectory includes Research Assistant at TUM from 2005 to 2009, Acting Director and Project Coordinator of the TUM-KAUST collaboration from 2009 to 2013, Assistant Professor in Durham's School of Engineering and Computing Sciences from 2013 to 2017, Associate Professor from 2017 to 2020, and full Professor since 2020. He was the inaugural director of the Master in Scientific Computing and Data Analysis programme from 2018 to 2024.

Weinzierl's research specializations encompass high-performance computing, parallel algorithms, and scientific computing, with emphasis on translating advanced numerical methods—such as multigrid, higher-order discontinuous Galerkin schemes, and smoothed particle hydrodynamics—into performance-portable code for modern heterogeneous architectures, often through open-source software like Peano and ExaHyPE. Notable publications include the monograph Principles of Parallel Scientific Computing (2022), ExaHyPE: An engine for parallel dynamically adaptive simulations of wave problems (2020, cited 131 times), Peano—a traversal and storage scheme for octree-like adaptive Cartesian multiscale grids (2011, cited 122 times), The PDE framework Peano applied to fluid dynamics (2010, cited 83 times), and Efficient implementation of ADER discontinuous Galerkin schemes for a scalable hyperbolic PDE engine (2018, cited 74 times). As principal investigator on projects within the UK's ExCALIBUR exascale programme, he heads the UK's first Intel oneAPI Centre of Excellence and leads initiatives like SHAREing, CAKE, and HAI-End for upskilling research technology professionals. He chairs the Artificial Intelligence Domain Panel for EuroHPC JU, serves as Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software and the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, and chairs the Applications track at Supercomputing 2026.