In the summer of 2025, the SimTech leadership team will bid farewell to two dedicated individuals who have played a key role in shaping the cluster over the past years: Miriam Schulte has stepped down from her role as spokesperson, and Johannes Kästner is relinquishing both his position as head of the Graduate School and his seat on the Board of Directors.
Miriam Schulte, Professor at the Institute for Parallel and Distributed Systems (IPVS), has been part of the spokesperson team since June 2024. In this role and as a long-standing member of the Executive Board, she has helped shape the scientific and strategic direction of SimTech – particularly in the context of the proposal for the continuation of the Cluster of Excellence. She will continue to contribute to SimTech as a Principal Investigator in the Cluster of Excellence, as Dean of Studies, and as a member of the Executive Board.
Johannes Kästner, Professor at and Vice Head of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, took over the leadership of the Graduate School in 2021 and had also been a member of the Board of Directors since 2019. As head of the Graduate School, he has shaped early-career support at SimTech with great reliability and foresight over the past four years. At the same time, he has contributed to the Board of Directors with a calm voice, clear perspective, and strong commitment – in strategic decisions, interdisciplinary coordination, and everyday challenges.
At this year's status seminar, Johannes Kästner was officially bid farewell by the doctoral researchers – marked by a symbolic gift presented by Wolfgang Nowak, spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence, and Katrin Gugeler, manager of the Graduate School.
During the same event, Wolfgang Nowak was introduced as the new head of the Graduate School. He will be supported by Dirk Pflüger as deputy head, as well as Katrin Gugeler and Hiser Sedik, who continue to provide organizational support from the management team.
Both of these personnel changes reflect personal decisions, but also continuity through change: the upcoming smooth transition from the current Cluster of Excellence to the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science (SC SimTech) – a permanent faculty-like institution of the university – requires a realignment of leadership roles and a restructuring of governance.