Field of Work
Together with the members of the Department of Hydromechanics and Modelling of Hydrosystems (LH2), Rainer Helmig focuses on developing methods for coupling hydrosystem compartments and complex flow and transport processes as well as integrating data and hydrosystem models. Special emphasis lays on the development and practical engineering application of simulation methods and techniques for describing single- and multi-phase flow and transport processes in the sub-surface and in porous and fractured-porous media.
These research foci play a major role for environmental, technological and biosystems. Examples include underground energy storage, the coupling of the water cycle and the atmosphere, modeling and optimization of the water budget in fuel cells as well as modeling of medication transport in the brain and the lungs. In recent years, due to intensive interdisciplinary and international research on "porous media", the University of Stuttgart has become an important centre of competence in this field.
Personal Information
Rainer Helmig is the head of the Department of Hydromechanics and Modelling of Hydrosystems (LH2) at the Institute for Modelling Hydraulic and Environmental Systems (IWS) of the University of Stuttgart, founded in 2000. Since 2018, he is the spokesman of the interdisciplinary and international Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1313 „Interface-Driven Multi-Field Processes in Porous Media. Flow, Transport and Deformation” of the University of Stuttgart, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). From 2018 to 2021 he was a member of the board of directors of the Cluster of Excellence EXC 2075 "Data-integrated Simulation Science" of the University of Stuttgart. Before, he covered this function for 10 years in the Cluster of Excellence EXC 310 “Simulation Technology”. From 2019 to 2022, he was awarded the Magne Espedal Honorary Professorship of the University of Bergen (Norway). In 2020, he was elected as one of the AGU Fellows by the American Geophysical Union. Since 2021, Rainer Helmig holds a research professorship at the University of Stuttgart.
Rainer Helmig was born in Hamm in 1957, studied civil engineering at the University of Hanover and completed his PhD there in 1993 on the “Theory and Numerics of Multiphase Flows in Fissured, Porous Media”. He was promoted to professor at the University of Stuttgart in 1996 on the subject of “Coupled Underground Flow and Transport Processes - A Contribution to Hydrosystem Modeling”.