Erik KochView profile
Associate Professor
Erik Koch is an apl. Prof. Dr. (Associate Professor) and head of the Research Group Computational Materials Science at the Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS) , Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) , within Forschungszentrum Jülich , Germany. His research is part of the Helmholtz Program-oriented Funding (PoF IV) under 'Engineering Digital Futures', focusing on enabling computational- and data-intensive science and engineering. He is actively engaged in both research and teaching, leading a group dedicated to understanding quantum materials with strong electronic correlations. His research interests center on the theoretical and computational challenges of strongly correlated electron systems . He investigates phenomena such as orbital ordering , employing advanced numerical techniques including Lanczos diagonalization and analytic continuation . His group develops and applies methods to tackle the many-body problem, particularly using Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) to bridge the gap between model systems and real materials, aiming to understand and design novel quantum materials with emergent functionalities. Prof. Koch is deeply involved in academic education. He teaches core and elective courses for the MSc in Simulation Sciences (MSc SiSc), including Applied Quantum Mechanics , Correlated Electrons , Density Functional Theory & Practice , and Solid State Theory . He is the primary organizer of the renowned annual Autumn School on Correlated Electrons , which has been a key international forum for over a decade, covering topics from Kondo physics to quantum topology and entanglement. This demonstrates his significant role in training the next generation of computational physicists. He has no listed scientific awards in the provided text. Prof. Koch leads the Computational Materials Science research group, which collaborates with the Strongly Correlated Systems group at PGI-2/IAS-3. His work is fundamentally tied to the high-performance computing resources at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, utilizing massively parallel simulations. While specific grants are not mentioned, his research is funded through the Helmholtz Association's Program-oriented Funding. The group's research area is focused on using analytical methods and large-scale simulations to understand and design quantum materials with strong electronic correlations.
