Dr. Messmer received his Ph.D from the Institute of Astronomy, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Dr. Messmer's research interests and skills include numerical plasma physics and its application to astronomy, parallel and distributed computing, algorithms, software tools and applications, grid technologies and Web technologies. Dr. Messmer was a research assistant for the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing and the Institute of Astronomy in Zürich.

Since joining Tech-X in 2002, Dr. Messmer has been involved in the development of VORPAL and it's application to a broad range of plasma physics problems. In addition, he is focusing on emerging high-performance technologies ranging from GPUs to FPGAs and was the lead developer of the GPULib.

• P. Messmer and D.L. Bruhwiler, 'Simulating laser pulse propagation and low-frequency wave emission in capillary plasma channel systems with a ponderomotive guiding center model', Phys. Rev. ST-AB,9, 031302, 2006.
• P. Messmer and D.L. Bruhwiler, 'A parallel electrostatic solver for the VORPAL code', Comp. Phys.Comm 164, 118, 2004.