Andrei-Leonard Nicusan is a final-year doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham’s School of Chemical Engineering and the CTO of a simulation-based spinout, focusing on new code development. He is fluent in over 20 programming languages and has extensive experience in the development of open-source scientific software, specialising in high-performance collision detection, evolutionary optimisation, and simulational-experimental calibration, including work with positron imaging. His significant contributions include the creation of the open-source symbolic regression framework MED, which has been adopted by major pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, the latter with whom his work won the “Best Use of HPC in Industry” award from HPCWire. Nicusan’s projects have garnered over £500,000 in grant funding, including a prominent role as Co-Investigator and lead technical developer on a project funded by the Henry Royce Institute. He has a robust track record with LIGGGHTS, the most utilised DEM engine, and is actively involved with integrating enhancements into the main LAMMPS distribution supported by Sandia’s maintainers. Throughout his five years at the university, Nicusan has developed, documented, and deployed high-performance software solutions that are now globally recognised and utilised across various industrial sectors, demonstrating his ability to bridge advanced computational methodologies with practical industrial applications.
