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Erick Schulz

I am a computational science engineer with a PhD in mathematics. I'm interested in research, technical software development and new technologies, with experience in simulation, scientific product development and leadership.

Plexim

Head of Scientific Software Development

Plexim · Zurich · 2024 - present

I lead our scientific software division, currently focusing on core solver technology and strategic R&D for next-generation simulation tools for power-electronic systems design and validation.

ETH Zurich

Lecturer (part-time)

ETH Zurich · 2026 - present

Teaching Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations in the Computational Science and Engineering department, and co-supervising graduate students.

Background

Plexim

Plexim

Team Lead Research Scientist · 2023 - 2024

Scientific Software Developer · 2022 - 2023

I joined Plexim in 2022 as a research scientist and software engineer, working on numerical methods and modeling for circuit simulation in C++. I was quickly promoted to team leader and put in charge of developing a custom differential-algebraic equation (DAE) solver for highly non-linear, mixed-formulation, mixed-signal, multiphysics circuits.

The project was part of the PowerizeD consortium, partially funded by Horizon Europe (~1M€). The new solver shipped at the end of 2025. For 2026, a follow-up proposal to develop AI-powered software tools to accelerate time-to-market of new power-electronic systems was awarded funding (~1M€) by the same institution.

ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich

PhD student · 2018 - 2022

My research focused on the interface between geometry and numerical analysis, where I developed stable methodologies for solving PDEs using finite and boundary element methods. I worked on models for electromagnetism based on Hodge-Dirac and Hodge-Laplace operators, leading to discoveries that were warmly received at the conference Fast Boundary Element Methods in Industrial Applications and earned a nomination for the ETH Medal in 2022. My collaboration with Prof. Ralf Hiptmair continues to this day.

I also co-led the development of NumPDE, a repository of ~100 algorithms for simulating phenomena such as fluid flow, electrostatics, shock waves, and heat propagation. This remains a standard framework for the Numerical Methods for PDEs course at ETH.

Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs

R&D Intern · 2017

I built a Levenberg-Marquardt nonlinear least-squares optimizer with geodesic acceleration. It was applied to identify surrogate models of heat propagation in large-scale HVAC systems and to parametrize robotic arms.

McGill University

McGill University

M.Sc. & B.A. · 2012 - 2017

I hold an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (2017) and a B.A. in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science (2016) from McGill University. I graduated with first class honours and appeared on the Dean's Honour List (top 10% of students in my faculty). My Master's thesis proposed the first proof of convergence of Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC). Despite its popular use in computer graphics and computational topology, understanding the method's convergence in general remains an open problem.

French and English speaker. Always open to discussing new challenges in computational science.