Dominik L. Michels

Faculty

Dominik L. Michels is a Full Professor (W3) of Computer Science holding the professorship of Intelligent Algorithms in Modeling and Simulation (IAMS) at the Technical University of Darmstadt since 2023. He is also a KAUST Associate Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, and was previously employed at Stanford University.

His research aims for the development of intelligent algorithms targeting principled, accurate and efficient simulations, and their applications in the fields of Visual Computing and Scientific Computing. This is based on solid theoretical foundations resulting from fundamental research comprising algorithmics, artificial intelligence, computer algebra, machine learning, mathematical modeling, and numerical analysis.

In summer 2016, he started to build up the Computational Sciences Group at KAUST. Before, Professor Michels joined the Computer Science faculty at Stanford University in fall 2014 heading the High Fidelity Algorithmics Group within the Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech. He studied Computer Science and Physics at University of Bonn and B-IT, from where he received a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Physics in 2011, a M.Sc. (first class honors) in Computer Science in 2013, and a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in Mathematics and Natural Sciences (Dr. rer. nat.) in early 2014. He was awarded the prize for the best dissertation in 2014 within his subject area. During his academic studies he was visiting several international institutions, among others Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research within the greater Moscow area. His studies and research were awarded and supported with various honors, for example by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, with a Johannes Kepler Foundation Scholarship awarded for excellent achievements in algorithmics and geometry, by the ACM SIGSAM for achievements in computer algebra, and with the academic award of the AFCEA. Professor Michels was awarded an artificial intelligence grant of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia endowed with 1.25 million euros in 2019.

In the non-academic context, he serves as a research partner in the sections of high-technology and consumer goods partnering with and advising leading multinational companies and research institutions from various sectors, specifically from the high-technology and consumer goods sections. Professor Michels is also involved in various spin-offs and start-ups. In this context, he received the first Procter & Gamble Faculty Award for his research contributions to the consumer goods industry. He also partnered and published regularly with Adobe, Google AI and Google Brain, respectively.

Professor Michels is a member of the ACM and the IEEE, the London Mathematical Society, and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, where he was inaugurated in 2023 as a corresponding academician. Professor Michels was selected as a member of the top-class jury for the German AI Award in 2019. He declined faculty offers from Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg in 2019, and from the University of Bonn in 2020. Professor Michels was appointed to the German Council of Advisors on Digital Economy in 2020 by the German government under Peter Altmaier, who served in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet as Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy. After the 2021 German federal election, he served in this capacity under Robert Habeck, the deputy to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.