During the past year, our group - the Computer Animation group led by Prof. Jan Bender - has published two papers built on top of an in-house library for the Finite Element Method (FEM). We are now working on refactoring and restructuring this library so that it is suitable for publishing under an open-source license.

The library is written in Rust, a safe and modern alternative to C and C++. In brief, Rust allows you to write code as fast as C/C++, yet without the burden of dealing with broken build systems, undefined behavior, segmentation faults and data races for parallel code. This allows us to spend more time developing and substantially less time  debugging. Our library will - to the best of our knowledge - be the first publicly available FEM library in Rust, and we want you to help us develop it. Once published, we intend to follow an open-source development model, where contributions are made as pull requests to a publicly available Git repository.

Our group is multi-disciplinary: we study the simulation of deformable solids, constrained rigid bodies, fluids and related tasks, such as reconstructing meshes from implicitly defined surfaces. As a HiWi in our group working on this project, you will have the chance to work on a variety of topics, depending on your interests. Some of the topics relevant for the library are:

- Finite Element Method (FEM) for non-linear deformable solids. - Parallel programming: FEM assembly, sparse matrix algorithms, solutions of linear systems. - Geometry tasks: Geometry processing, collision detection, distance queries. - Frictional contact mechanics. - Input/output: Importing and exporting time series of textured 3D models and auxiliary data, compatibility with 3D software like Maya and Blender. - Software development practices and documentation.

We are looking for highly motivated candidates that:

- have knowledge about and a strong interest in physics simulation. - have a strong interest in, and are comfortable with, programming. - are interested in working closely in a team with PhD students and other HiWis. - are able to work and learn independently with regular (or sometimes irregular) supervision. - have a decent grasp of both spoken and written English. - are in their Bachelor or Master studies, ideally with the possibility of working with us over a longer period of time. - preferably have some experience with FEM, but we are also interested in strong candidates who are interested in helping out with the non-FEM parts of the library.

Experience with Rust is not a requirement, as we will provide the necessary training and time to get up to speed. Experience with Rust or C++ is, however, an advantage.

We offer:

- salary regulated by standard HiWi rates. - approx. 10 hours per week, but this is negotiable. - the opportunity to work on an open-source project, which you can demonstrate to future employers. - friendly colleagues.

If you are curious about the position and have questions, please drop Andreas Longva an e-mail at longva@cs.rwth-aachen.de. Applicants should send a brief letter of motivation, their CV and a transcript of their grades to Prof. Jan Bender at bender@cs.rwth-aachen.de. Since we employ HiWis for multiple purposes, please make it clear in your application if you are particularly interested in working on the Rust FEM project.