Christof Stein

Scientific software engineer for HPC and GPU computing, finishing an MSc in physics at the University of Innsbruck.

Portrait of Christof Stein

Recent projects

MSc thesis

Galactic Gamma-Ray Emission with PICARD

Turning a research code for gamma-ray maps of the Milky Way into modern, reusable C++: refactored and extended PICARD’s gamma-ray pipeline with HEALPix line-of-sight integration, parallel I/O across nodes, and cross-checks against HERMES via pybind11.

Ongoing

Zilatran Chess using Reinforcement Learning

Teaching an AI a chess variant through self-play on a compute cluster: reinforcement learning environment in Python with MPI-distributed play and PyTorch networks.

GitHub, Python, updated Oct 2026

2026

Tall-Skinny QR Decomposition

GPU linear algebra written from scratch: several QR algorithms in CUDA/C++ without vendor libraries, with GoogleTest unit tests and automated benchmarking and profiling.

GitHub, CUDA/C++, updated Oct 2026

2026

Molecular Simulation Framework

Molecular mechanics simulations, from the physical model to GPU kernels: modular Python/C framework with Lennard-Jones and Ewald/PME Coulomb interactions, Monte Carlo sampling, and Numba/CUDA acceleration.

GitHub, Python/C, updated Oct 2026

2025

Natural Evolution Strategies

Optimizing without gradients: evolution strategies over parametrized search distributions for general black-box problems (Python).

GitHub, Python, updated Oct 2026

Code

Christof Stein on GitHub@cry-phyPhysics MSc @ Uni Innsbruck · scientific software for HPC & GPUsChristof Stein on GitLab@csaz67456 public repositories

Shaders

A few hobby projects: small physics experiments written as real-time GLSL shaders. They run in your browser on your GPU; use the arrows to switch. More on Shadertoy.

ParticlesSomehowSomwhereTen particles in the Lorenz attractor, started almost at the same point. Watch chaos pull their trails apart (give it half a minute); positions live in float buffers from frame to frame.
BlackHoleHasAlreadyBeenDoneGravitational lensing around a black hole: every light ray is stepped through the Schwarzschild photon-orbit equation, so the room behind it bends into rings as the camera circles the scene and a lit sphere.

Education

2025–present

MSc Physics

University of Innsbruck, Austria, expected February 2027
  • Thesis: “Improved Simulated Gamma Emission Maps – From Ring Model to HEALPix-Based Gas Models”
  • Supervisor: Ralf Kissmann
2025–2026

Extension Study Programme in Scientific Computing

University of Innsbruck, Austria
  • High-performance computing (HPC), numerical methods (FEM, PDE solvers), machine learning, and software engineering for scientific applications
2021–2025

BSc Physics

University of Innsbruck, Dept. of Ion Physics and Applied Physics
  • Thesis: “Genetic Algorithms for Surface Optimization of Metal Oxides as Catalysts for CO2 Hydrogenation”, computed on the LEO5 HPC cluster
  • Supervisors: Milan Ončák, Gabriel Schöpfer
2020

Abitur

Humboldt-Gymnasium Karlsruhe, Germany

Additional exposure

Personal

Remote administration of Linux systems

Personal

Declarative, reproducible system configurations with NixOS

2026

Real-time GLSL shaders

2024

CI/CD work on deploying Python packages