Hi! I'm Fabian.

Software Engineer based in Vienna, Austria.
Background in Computational Physics, passion for software design and automation.
For more details, view my Academic Record and my CV.

From Quantum Physics to Code

When I was young I came across Knaurs Buch der modernen Physik and spent months trying to decipher every page. That curiosity never really faded, and it eventually carried me to a PhD in theoretical physics. Quantum mechanics in particular fascinated me. My doctoral work went into developing a new method for simulating interacting many-body quantum systems. Afterwards I spent a few years researching, teaching and supervising. I really liked teaching because it forces you to refactor your knowledge into a form that can be communicated clearly, which often gives both the students and yourself a better picture.

Hitting the Metal

Writing simulation code is where I found a real interest in software design. Decomposing a physics problem is not so different from decomposing a software project: clear interfaces, clear responsibilities, something intricate built from pieces you can reason about on their own. From there I wanted to go lower, close to the hardware, and moved into embedded development. For six years I built security protocols for automotive ECUs, among them TLS, IPsec/IKE and MACsec/MKA, running in many cars on the road today. Safety-critical work has a discipline of its own. It requires you to think about validation and testing as an integral part of the development process, not as an afterthought.