Thomas Ruh

Sparkling Simulator & Error Exorcist

Thomas did his bachelor studies in „Technical Chemistry“ at the TU Wien (working on automated NMR evaluation). He achieved his Master’s degree in „Chemistry and Technology of Materials“ jointly at TU Wien and the University of Vienna (trying to incorporate carbon nanotubes into viscose fibers). His PhD work was done in the group of Prof. Blaha, where he worked on the performance of the DFT code WIEN2k, as well as applying it to study surface adsorption, optimize atomic positions for XRD pattern simulation, and creating DFT benchmark sets.

He joined AG Rameshan in April 2019 where he is responsible for the theory support still using WIEN2k (while finishing up his thesis). In 2023, he finally and most surprisingly (even to him) finished his PhD and “re-joined” the groups as PostDoc.
Moreover, he is the resident grammar ninja due to a strange fascination with propper (and grammatical correct) langauge – for that reason, he is prone to grammatic prank’s by his colleagues.

A self proclaimed „general purpose nerd“ (a nerd without real specialty), Thomas spends his free time playing chess and video games, reading fantasy or sci-fi novels, or watching anime. Even though he enjoys the occasional tennis or squash match, most sports trigger severe horror in him.