Tobias Blickhan

Hi! I am a Faculty Fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in the group of Ben Peherstorfer.

I am working on computational methods for partial differential equations. This includes structure-preserving numerical methods for plasma physics applications and reduced order modeling to accelerate the solution of parametrized partial differential equations in multi-query contexts.

Most recently, I have been looking into magnetic relaxation methods for stellarator optimization and how generative modeling methods can be used to approximate stochastic ODE and PDE systems.

Before joining NYU, I completed my PhD at the Technische Universität München and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in the Numerical Methods for Plasma Physics division with Michael Kraus and Eric Sonnendrücker. Before that, I obtained an MSc in Physics, BSc in Engineering Science from TUM and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Bamberg.

Research interests:

  • Computational plasma physics
    • Magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium solvers
    • Structure-preserving finite elements
    • Differentiable programming for physics simulations
  • Scientific machine learning
    • Generative models for physics systems
    • Population dynamics inference
  • Model order reduction
    • Reduced basis methods for advection-dominated problems
    • Optimal transport methods