Our team


Principal Investigator

Asst. Prof. Dr. Carl Goodrich

email: carl.goodrich@ist.ac.at
office: I24.O1.025 (Moonstone Building)
phone: +43 2243 9000 2181

Carl grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, obtaining his BS in Physics and Mathematics in 2009 from Syracuse University. Under the guidance of Dr. Andrea Liu and Dr. Sidney Nagel, he received his Ph.D in Theoretical Soft-Matter Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. He then moved back to Boston as a postdoctoral fellow with Michael Brenner at Harvard University. He is now an Assistant Professor at IST Austria, where he runs the Theoretical and Computational Soft Matter group.

Assistant to Professor (A2P)

Caroline (Caro) Ernst-Petz

email: caroline.petz@ist.ac.at

Caro was born in Austria and grew up right around the corner of ISTA. She did her master in Science of Education at the University of Vienna, working all kinds of jobs on the side (mostly administration & organization). After helping an Austrian start-up to build up a subsidiary in Germany, she landed at ISTA as an assistant to professors and their groups.

Postdocs

Mengjie Zu

email: mengjie.zu@ist.ac.at

Mengjie was born in the north of China. Under the guidance of Dr. Ning Xu, she completed her Ph.D in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2017. She did a first postdoc at Cambridge University, working on entropy estimation with Daan Frenkel. She joined the Goodrich group in November 2021 and works on design of multi-component self-assembly.

Graduate Students

Andreas Ehrmann (jointly affiliated in the Hannezo Group)

email: andreas.ehrmann@ist.ac.at

Andreas grew up in southern Germany and obtained his BSc and MSc in Physics at the University of Stuttgart, including a semester abroad at Chalmers in Göteborg. Specializing in statistical physics he got interested in biological systems and performed theoretical research on stochastic thermodynamics and biochemical signaling networks. He joined IST late 2019 for an internship in the Tkacik and Loose groups to follow his curiosity and appreciates the international, interdisciplinary, and stimulating atmosphere. He joined the Goodrich and Hannezo groups for his PhD and investigates the dynamics of packings in self-assembly and biology.

Maximilian (Maxi) Martin Lechner

email: maximilian.lechner@ist.ac.at

Maximilian (Max) Huebl

email: maximilian.huebl@ist.ac.at

Max was born in Vienna, Austria. He obtained his MSc in technical physics from the Vienna University of Technology, where he used Reinforcement Learning to study theoretical models for swimming microorganisms. He joined the Goodrich group as an intern in June 2021.

Scientific Interns

Previous Members

Teun Verouden (Scientific Intern)

email: t.w.j.verouden@student.tue.nl

Teun was born in the Netherlands. He obtained his BSc in applied physics from Eindhoven University of Technology in 2021 and is since then pursuing his MSc in applied physics, also in Eindhoven, with the track: Fluids, bio and soft matter. He joined the group in August 2022 for an internship.

Janice Yeuk Lam Sui (ISTern)

email: yeuk.sui19@imperial.ac.uk

Janice was born in Hong Kong and is currently in her penultimate year of MSci in Chemistry at Imperial College London, where her interest towards molecular dynamics simulation and self-assembly flourished.  She joined the Goodrich group in IST Austria as a research intern in July 2022.

Qing-Long Liu (Scientific Intern)

email: qliu@ist.ac.at

Qing-Long got his master in applied mathematics and informatics from HSE, Russia and bachelor in chemistry from Inner Mongolia University, China.

In the Goodrich Group, he worked on applying automatic differentiation technique to classical molecular dynamics simulations, and studied the use of hierarchical gradient rematerialization.

His personal website is https://scnlong.github.io/

Anton Piankov (Masters student)

email: anton.piankov@ist.ac.at

Anton comes from Ukraine. He completed his bachelor degree at MIPT, Russia. He has broad interest in physics, math and biology. Currently he is working on programmable self-assembly.

Rotation Students (past & current)

Marija Krsticcurrent
Mauricio (Mau) Rojas Vegapast
Cecelia Mwekapast
Christine Fiedlerpast
Moyuan Chenpast
Selver Pepicpast
Veronika Szentirmaipast
Vicente Luis DÍAZ MELIANpast