Simon Pfreundschuh

Simon Pfreundschuh

Simon Pfreundschuh is a Master’s student in physics with a background in computer science and mathematics. Originally from Germany, he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Kiel, Germany. After a short stay in Strasbourg, France, he continued his studies with a Master’s degree in computational science at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Currently, he is pursuing a second Master’s degree in physics also at Chalmers University of Technology. He is interested in all topics that combine programming, computing, and physics, especially fundamental physics but also earth observations and plasma physics and hopes to follow up his studies with a Ph.D in one of those fields.

During the Summer of HPC, Simon is working on a project in the Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) group of Prof. C. Alexandrou at the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus. Lattice QCD is a theory that describes the strong interaction between quarks and/or gluons. The strong interaction is one of the fundamental forces that holds together all matter. Among other things, it is responsible for the force that keeps protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei from falling apart. Lattice QCD can be used to perform first principles computations of interactions between strongly interacting particles. This, however, requires the solution of very large linear systems of equations and is computationally very demanding. Lattice QCD computations therefore require highly efficient software and very powerful computers. Simon’s task is to implement an interface for the passing of eigenvectors from one software package to another in order to better exploit available computational resources.

Simon is convinced that his time here at Cyprus Institute will be a highly inspiring one and that he will learn a lot about both physics and computing. Besides his work at the Cyprus Institute, he is looking forward to discovering the island on his bike and getting to know people and culture.