Ute Ebert

Ute Ebert is a part-time professor of Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and leads the Multiscale Dynamics research group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam. She is internationally recognized for her pioneering theoretical and computational work on electric discharges in gases, particularly streamer discharges which are fast-moving ionized filaments that serve as precursors to sparks and lightning.

Her educational background includes studies at the University of Heidelberg (1980-1987), Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1987-1988), a PhD at the University of Essen, Germany (1988-1994), and postdoctoral work at Leiden University (1994-1998), followed by positions at CWI Amsterdam (1998-2001) and TU/e (2002-present).

Ebert's research focuses on plasma physics and atmospheric electricity, with particular expertise in the quantitative modeling of electric discharges. Her work spans multiple scales, connecting fundamental plasma physics with atmospheric electricity and practical applications in high-voltage technology. She combines theoretical physics, numerical simulation, and collaboration with laboratory experiments to understand how discharges initiate, propagate, branch, and interact, and how they may create electric short circuits, greenhouse gases like nitrogen oxides, and high-energy radiation.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on 3D modeling of streamer discharges in various environments, including studies of streamer branching, parameterization of streamer heads, radio emissions from streamers, and the effects of magnetic fields and gas composition on discharge behavior. Her work has important applications in high-voltage technology and atmospheric science.

Ebert has received numerous prestigious awards for her contributions to the field:

• Von Engel and Franklin Prize (2025) for "seminal contributions to the state-of-the-art, high-fidelity theory and simulations of transient electric discharges"
• Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2022) "for crucial theoretical, numerical and experimental insights on lightning and related sciences"
• Dutch Minerva Prize (2004) for the best physics publication by a woman in the Netherlands
• Member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (since 2006)

She actively advises PhD students and postdocs, many of whom have become successful members of the worldwide discharge community. Her current research includes the "Green sparks" project focused on understanding electric breakdown dynamics of eco-friendly insulating gases for high-voltage technology. She serves on editorial boards for journals like Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics and Plasma Sources Science and Technology, and participates in international scientific committees.

Ebert leads the Multiscale Dynamics group at CWI, which develops advanced computational methods for simulating electric discharges across multiple scales. The group has created tools like Afivo (a Framework for quadtree/octree AMR with shared memory parallelization) that enable efficient parallel computations for plasma modeling. Her team collaborates extensively with experimental groups studying lightning, streamer discharges, and high-voltage phenomena.