Hans Fangohr

Hans Fangohr is researching Computational Science at the Max-Planck Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg (Germany) and is Professor of Computational Modelling at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom).

He received his undergraduate degree "Diplomphysiker" in physics from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and completed his PhD studies in the High Performance Computing Group at the department of Computer Science in Southampton. He is a full professor since 2010, and specialised in computational science, data analysis and software engineering for science.

From 2017 to 2020, he has been leading the data analysis work at the European X-ray Free Electon Laser (EuXFEL) in Schenefeld (Germany), building up the data analysis group, data analysis infrastructure and tools to make the facility's data more accessible, and easier to analyse and understand.

At Southampton, he has brought together and led the computational science community of over 500 academics and researchers (2008), founded the University's Computational Modelling Group (2008), co-directed the doctoral training centre for Complex Systems Simulations, and initiated and directed the Centre for Doctoral Training in Computational Modelling (2013) up to his relocation to the European XFEL in Germany.

His research interests are at the interface between computer science and computational science: using and developing computer science based methodology to support science and engineering research through high performance computing and data analysis. He works on computational modelling methodology, data analysis and visualisation of scientific data sets, reproducibility, user interfaces and workflows, and software engineering for research computing. He also applies computational science in magnetic materials and other systems to solve concrete scientific problems. Open Science, open data and open source are central themes of his research, education and policy efforts.

Projects include computational science support for the MPSD institute, data analysis for the European X-ray Free Electron Laser, use and development of the Jupyter Notebook for data analysis and computational science, micromagnetic modelling of a variety of systems, and development and provision of the micromagnetic simulation frameworks such as Nmag, Fidimag and Ubermag. A number of other tools and packages are provided through his group's activities, including nbval and the Open Science COVID Analysis site OSCOVIDA.

Hans is teaching the subject of computational science, including programming, high performance computing and software engineering to students at graduate and postgraduate level. He researches learning and teaching methods appropriate to education in computational science, and has been awarded Southampton's Vice Chancellor's Teaching Award (GBP 1000) three times for his innovative redesign and delivery of the computing curriculum. He has created and directed doctoral training and PhD studies in next generation computational modelling at Southampton.

Measures of Esteem

Heading SSU Computational Science at the Max Planck Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter (since 2021)
Lead of Work Package 4 on Data Analysis in the Photon and Neutron Open Science Cloud project (2018-2020)
Head of Data Analysis at European XFEL (2017 to 2020)
Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute (since 2017)
Associate Editor for High Performance Computing, Multi-physics Simulation, and Computational Modelling for the Journal of Open Research Software (since 2016)
Founder and Head of the Computational Modelling Group at the University of Southampton (2008-2017)
Author of book Introduction to Python for Computational Science and Engineering which is used by many institutions and learners, and has been translated into other languages.
Founder and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling (2013-2017)
Co-director of the Institute for Complex Systems Simulations and Doctoral Training Centre (2008-2017)
Chair of the national EPSRC Scientific Advisory Committee for High Performance Computing (2014-2017)
Member of international advisory committee for Conference on Computational Physics 2018 (and others in the past)
Member of the Programme Committee for International Conference on Magnetism 2018 (and others in the past)
Member of the management board of the UK's supercomputer ARCHER (2014-2017)
Member of the Computational Physics Commission (C20) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (since Nov 2011, re-elected Dec 2014 until 2017)
Chair of University Strategic Research Group Complexity in Real World Contexts (2010-2016).
Member of Strategic Advisory Board for EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Condensed Matter Physics (2016-2017)
Member of the Southampton University Doctoral College Board (2014-2017), and the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment's graduate school (2013-2017)
Professor of Computational Modelling (since 2010)
Staff member and modelling advisor of National Institute for Advanced Tribology (nCATS) (2007-2017)
Member of the EU Cost Action P19 on Multi-Scale modelling (2006-2010)
Member of the Computational Physics Group Committee at the Institute of Physics (2004-2016)
School courses coordinator for the 800 student strong School of Engineering Sciences (2007-2010)
Editor of Computational Physics Group Newsletter (2006-2010)
Member of the Advisory Editorial Board Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (2010 - 2012)
Reviewer for grant applications including agencies from Austria, Belgium,Germany, Netherlands, Sweden
Professional Memberships
- Member of the Society of Research Software Engineering
- Member of Institute of Physics, Magnetism, Computational Physics, Higher Education group, UK
- Member of IEEE, Computer Science and Magnetism group, US
- Member of German Physical Society, Germany
- Member of Higher Academy for Education, UK
- Senior Fellow of Young United Kingdom and Ireland Programme
Selected Publications and contributed and invited talks

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