Members of the Convection Group

Current members

Dr. Stephan Weiss (Group leader)

Stephan WeissStephan Weiss studied physics at the University of Bayreuth, where he gained his diploma in 2005. After a short research stay at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (Israel) he started working at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation and was awarded a PhD in experimental physics from the Georg-August University Göttingen in 2009. He worked as a postdoc at the UC Santa Barbara (DFG-Fellowship) on turbulent thermal convection and at University Michigan about spirals in oscillating chemical reactions. In August 2015 he joined the institute as a group leader working on various aspects of thermal convection. CV

Gabriele Nunnari (PhD student)

Gabriele defended his thesis successfully on 14th of June 2021!!

Gabriele NunnariGabriele Nunnari studied physics at the University of Messina, Italy, where he received a Bachelor in 2013 and a Master in 2015. In his Master thesis he developed techniques to better analyse neutron scattering spectra. Gabriele joined the group as a PhD student in 2016 where he is working experimentally on mixed thermal convection from a hot plate in air flow.

Marcel Wedi (PhD student)

Marcel WediMarcel Wedi studied physics at the Georg-August University Göttingen with major in astrophysics. After spending a semester at the Universidad Autonoma, Barcelona (Spain) as an Erasmus fellow, he joined our group in 2017 as a master student. He finished his Master in summer 2018 and continued working with us as a PhD student. Marcel investigates the influence of rotation on the heat transport and the flow field in turbulent thermal convection.

Hiu-Fai Yik (PhD student)

Hiu-Fai YikHiu-Fai Yik studied physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and recived his Bachelor degree in 2017. During his Bachelor studies, he worked with Prof. Penger Tong on the statistical properties of boundary layer fluctuation in turbulent Rayleigh Bénard Convection since 2015. In 2016, he worked as a visiting student reseacher in KTH Royal Institute of Technology with Prof. Jan Scheffel on testing the numerical efficiency of the Generalized Weighted Residual Method (GWRM). He joined the convection group in MPIDS in 2017, where he focuses on the investigation of thermal convection under strong non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq conditions.

Kim Lambert (Master student)

Kim studied physics at the Georg-August University Göttingen with major in material sience. She joined our group in 2018 as a master student to investigate the forming of the Ekman layer under rotaional convection.



Associated members

Dr. Alexei Krekhov

Dr. habil. Alexei KrekhovAlexei Krekhov Dr. habil. Alexei Krekhov received his PhD in theoretical physics from the Perm State University (Russia) in 1990 studying defects in liquid crystals. During his Humboldt Research Fellowship at U. Bayreuth from 1994-96 he studied pattern formation in liquid crystals. Starting 1999 he was a researcher at U. Bayreuth working on pattern formation in complex fluids and soft matter theory. In 2010 he received the habilitation in theoretical physics from U. Bayreuth. He joined the institute in October 2013. His current research interests include nonlinear dynamics in excitable media, two phase convection and modeling of cell motility.



Former members

Sascha Lambert now at Georg August University Göttingen
Prasanth Prabhakaran now Postdoc at Michigan Tech, Houghton, USA
Chien-Chia Liu now Postdoc at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Xiaozhou He now at Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China
Dennis v. Gils now at TU Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Florian Winkel
Gabriel Seiden
Will Brunner
Johnathan McCoy now at Colby College
Karen Daniels now at NC State University
Brendan Plapp