Skip to main content
ITC Fellow · Harvard & Smithsonian CfA

Oliver Zier

Computational astrophysicist

I simulate how the first galaxies lit up the universe — leading the Lumina project to model cosmic reionization on exascale supercomputers.

Research Publications CV Contact
Portrait of Oliver Zier

About

I am a computational astrophysicist studying structure formation across a wide range of scales — from the cosmic web during reionization to the small-scale physics of star formation, protoplanetary disks, and accretion flows.

As PI of the Lumina project, I lead an effort to model cosmic reionization and the formation of the first galaxies with the moving-mesh code AREPO. In parallel, I work on self-interacting dark matter, non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics, and accretion-disk physics. I also develop the numerical methods and GPU-accelerated algorithms needed to carry out these simulations on exascale supercomputers.

Before joining Harvard, I was a postdoctoral researcher with Mark Vogelsberger at MIT. I earned my PhD in 2023 at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, working with Volker Springel on protoplanetary-disk simulations and on improving the AREPO and GADGET-4 codes.

My academic background spans Physics and Computer Science at the University of Bayreuth and Mathematical and Theoretical Physics at LMU Munich. I am originally from Wunsiedel in northern Bavaria.

Recent

Papers, talks, and milestones.

  1. Paper

    Two first-author reionization papers accepted at MNRAS

    Population III star formation continues through reionization; long-term imprints of external reionization on galaxy evolution.

  2. Position

    Started as ITC Fellow at Harvard & Smithsonian CfA

    Leading the Lumina simulation project on cosmic reionization and high-redshift galaxy formation.

  3. Paper

    GPU-accelerated AREPO-RT published in MNRAS

    The first exascale-ready port of the AREPO radiation-transport module.