Dear Stefan, dear family and friends, ladies and gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Stefan Kurz's introductory lecture as Professor of Practice.
Stefan Kurz was born in Ludwigsburg in Germany's south in 1966 and studied electrical engineering at nearby Stuttgart University from 1987 to 1993. His deep fascination for electrodynamics and for its manifold mathematical treatments has been sparked in this period by several mentoring personalities in mathematics and physics. One of those mentors, Guenther Lehner, supervised Stefan's doctoral thesis on numerical methods, namely finite and boundary element methods, for coupled electromechanical systems, which Stefan completed in 1998.
In Stefan's work, deep mathematical theory, e.g., from differential topology or operator theory, meets with concrete applications, e.g., in the numerics of electrodynamical systems. Take a look at the report: "Boundary Integral Exterior Calculus" jointly with Erick Schulz and our colleague Ralf Hiptmair. It demonstrates in an impressive way the omnipresent mutual inspiration between engineering applications and mathematical theory. When describing this bridge, of which we know many examples and which is an essential part of human culture and progress, Stefan also quoted me one of his favorite poems "Zusaetzliche Bedingung" by Erich Fried: "Wichtig ist nicht nur, dass ein Mensch das Richtige denkt, sondern auch, dass der der das Richtige denkt ein Mensch ist". A great credo for an engineer and for a scientist, in academia as well as in industry.
Stefan's career trajectory links academic and engineering work in a unique
way: he has been strongly connected on the one hand with Robert Bosch GmbH almost all his professional life, where he has worked in various leading positions. Recently, since 2019, Stefan has been a VP Chief Expert for hybrid modelling there at the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence. On the other hand he was a full professor for electromagnetic theory from 2003 to 2004 at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. From 2010 to 2014, he led a research project on advanced electromagnetic modeling as a Finland Distinguished Professor at Tampere University of Technology. From 2015 to 2021, he held a chair at TU Darmstadt's Centre for Computational Engineering. We are very happy that Stefan Kurz continues his academic ambitions at ETH Zurich: he joined D-MATH as its first Professor of Practice in 2024.
We are very much looking forward to Stefan's introductory lecture.