Christoph Ortner

Professor, Department of Mathematics
University of British Columbia

1984 Mathematics Road
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

Office: LSK 303

christoph.ortner@ubc.ca

Research

Nowadays I mostly focus on scientific machine learning surrogates for atomistic modelling and electronic structure, with occasional excursions into many-body problems and coarse-graining. This work straddles rigorous analysis, numerical analysis, scientific computing, machine learning, and modelling, often in collaboration with domain scientists.

I also have a continuing interest in general questions of atomistic simulation, in particular geometry optimization (saddle points search, transition paths, preconditioners) Previous topics that I occasionally still revisit include mathematical models of material defects, boundary conditions for atomistic simulation, QM/MM and atomistic-to-continuum embedding methods. Older topics include the Lavrentiev gap phenomenon, adaptive and discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods, phase field models of fracture, and gradient flows.

See the publication list for details.

Software

Most of my research code lives in the ACEsuit GitHub organisation.

Students

For students interested in working with me there is flexibility in which branches of this research programme to engage with, from analysis to software. See the group page for current and former members. My students are normally members of the Institute of Applied Mathematics at UBC. I accept students through the standard departmental intake procedure; see the Mathematics Department's information for prospective graduate students and admissions pages for details.