Nils Vu
Postdoctoral Researcher In Numerical Relativity And High-Performance Computing
Pasadena, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNils Vu is a computational physicist and postdoctoral researcher at Caltech with 12 years of experience building high-performance software for numerical relativity and gravitational-wave science. He holds a PhD from the Max Planck Institute where he was a core developer of SpECTRE, contributing advanced pseudo-spectral and task-parallel solvers for multi-physics simulations of black hole and neutron star mergers. Nils blends deep numeric PDE expertise with practical software engineering—maintaining Spack package recipes and improving cross-platform builds to make complex scientific codes reproducible on supercomputers. He also teaches and builds developer tools, from an introductory Python course and iOS lectures to visualization pipelines at CERN, reflecting a strong commitment to pedagogy and reproducible research. Colleagues rely on him to bridge theory, scalable code design, and data visualization to deliver production-ready simulation infrastructure. Outside core research he brings an eye for design and developer experience that helps scientific software reach broader communities.
12 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS, Physics, Master of Science - MS, Physics at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität HeidelbergBachelor of Science - BS, Physics, Bachelor of Science - BS, Physics at Heidelberg University
English, German
Github Skills (14)
package-manager-tool10
build-tools10
c-language10
package-manager10
cmake10
cprogramming-language10
spack10
package-management10
python10
build-system9
hdf9
linux8
macos8
scientific-computing7
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
sxs-collaboration/spectre
Apr 2018 - Jan 2023
SpECTRE is a code for multi-scale, multi-physics problems in astrophysics and gravitational physics.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4154 reviews, 1532 commits, 1575 PRs in 4 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Nils made several contributions to the `sxs-collaboration/spectre` repository, primarily involving the implementation of an XCTS (Extended Conformal Thin Sandwich) solver for astrophysics and gravitational physics problems. This involved fixing build issues related to CMake and improving Python build support. The user also implemented a volume data writing action.
pythonproblemshierarchicalsimulationreduction
spack/spack
Jan 2022 - Aug 2022
A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Package Maintainer
Back-end Developer & Package MaintainerContributions:49 reviews, 25 commits, 35 PRs in 7 months
Contributions summary:Nils primarily contributes to the Spack package manager by adding and modifying package definitions. Their work includes incorporating new versions of existing packages like `doxygen`, `libogg`, `curl`, and `spectre`, as well as adding new packages such as `SpECTRE`, `py-quaternionic`, and `py-spherical`. They also fix build issues and add features such as PIC support, and support for external detection, while also managing and updating build configurations of existing packages to work better on different systems.
compilerspythonradiussplatformslinux
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