Raphael Leu

Equal parts scientist and artist. Physicist and PhD Researcher in numerical analysis. Musician fronting Arkas and drummer of two bands. Further, I have been part of the organizing committee of Lauter Festival (ZH) since 2025 and co-head in 2026.

Currently, I am persuing a PhD in mathematics at the University Of Bern with a focus on numerical analysis. I am especially interested in solving non-linear Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) by means of variational energy reduction techniques on adaptive finite element (FEM) spaces.

I have formerly worked as a research assistant at the Eastern Switzerland University Of Applied Sciences in the Scientific Computing & Engineering team , where I was involved in the set-up and automation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and the maintenance of the in-house cluster. I have experience both with STAR-CCM+ and the open-source project OPENFOAM.

Also, I have worked as a C++/Python software developer at Meteomatics AG , where I was mainly involved in the implementation of the weather API and performance optimizations thereof.

As a solo artist, I release music as ARKAS and, as a drummer, I am both part of the Band Kaufmann and Happy For Real.