About Us

Our Team

We are RAMMS

Marc Christen

Founder / Visionary / Development

With a degree in civil engineering from ETH Zürich, a Master of Advanced Studies in Software Engineering from HSR Rapperswil, and decades of hands-on experience with tools like IDL, C, C++, Python and GIS, Marc is the architect behind the RAMMS software — from the first line of code to the latest release. He spent over 27 years at the SLF (Snow and Avalanche Research Center in Davos), where he build models like AVAL-1D, and, of course, RAMMS itself.

Officially the founder — unofficially also the lead developer, tech problem-solver, and “whatever-needs-doing” guy — he prefers code over job titles. Outside of work, he’s a dad to a spirited 7-year-old girl who now sets the pace. Skiing and mountain biking are still part of life, just dialed down a notch from the pre-parenting days.

Heike Einhorn

Co-Founder / Administration

Heike brings a whole different kind of energy to RAMMS — the grounding, holistic kind. With a deep passion for therapy, physiotherapy, Shiatsu, yoga, and all things healing, she’s spent decades exploring the human body and mind. These days, though, she’s channeling most of her focus into the health of the company itself.

From licenses and invoices to customer emails and office sanity, Heike handles the day-to-day operations that keep RAMMS running smoothly. She’s also the heart of the RAMMS family — partner to Marc, and mom to their 7-year-old girl (who might secretly run the whole show).

Daniel Dillier

Co-Founder / Finance & Legal

Daniel is RAMMS’ trusted legal and financial compass. As a partner at Ludwig+Partner AG in Basel, he brings deep expertise in business law, contracts, and corporate governance — exactly the kind of sharp legal mind a spin-off like ours needs. From drafting agreements to advising on structure and keeping the accounting tight, Daniel makes sure we stay on the right side of the law.

But beyond the suits and statutes, Daniel is also one of Marc’s best childhood friend. They grew up in the same village, climbed mountains together, and shared school years — then life took them in different directions for two decades. RAMMS brought them back together, and it’s been a perfect reunion of trust, experience, and a lot of shared history.

Officially: Attorney at Law, Swiss Certified Tax Expert and partner at Ludwig+Partner AG.
Unofficially: lifelong friend and the guy who keeps us from getting sued.

Perry Bartelt

Senior Scientist / Engineer

Perry holds a PhD in numerical modeling from ETH Zürich and a degree in civil engineering from the United States. With nearly 30 years of research experience at WSL and SLF, he is widely recognized as a leading expert in natural hazard modeling. His scientific contributions laid the foundation for tools like SNOWPACK, AVAL-1D, and RAMMS, and his numerous publications have made a lasting impact in the field.

He was Marc’s boss for nearly three decades — but tables turned when he joined RAMMS AG after retiring from SLF. Now, he brings his encyclopedic knowledge, steady wisdom, and dry wit to developing new modules, writing manuals, and teaching the next generation of RAMMS users through tutorials and training.

At home, he’s surrounded by three daughters, a wife, and a dog — though we’re still not sure who actually runs the household. (We suspect the dog.)

Global Collaborations

Our partners

China

Dr. Yu Zhuang – Official RAMMS Representative in China

Assistant Professor at Hunan University, Founder of Changsha YuDun Technology Co., Ltd.

Dr. Zhuang is an Assistant Professor at Hunan University in China and the founder of Changsha YuDun Technology Co., Ltd. He has worked closely with RAMMS AG, including over one year of direct collaboration in Switzerland, where he was deeply involved in both the development and application of the RAMMS software.

With his deep understanding of the theoretical background of RAMMS and his ongoing contributions to its evolution, he now serves as our exclusive main distributor for China. In addition to representing RAMMS in China, Dr. Zhuang actively supports the development and testing of new RAMMS models, drawing on his academic expertise and field experience.

For inquiries, local support, or purchases in China, please contact Dr. Zhuang or visit his official website:

Yu Zhuang

Changsha YuDun Technology Co., Ltd.

Our history

Where we come from

In 2005, Perry Bartelt, Urs Gruber and Marc Christen, all three working at the WSL-Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF at that time, started to think about a new, user-friendly graphical user interface for the old 2D-avalanche code (AVAL-2D). The forerunner of RAMMS, AVAL-2D, was also developed at SLF, and used for 2D avalanche simulations, see video on the right. The visualization technique was then done by Xlib on Unix Systems, and was far from user-friendly, as you can imagine.

The first prototyp of RAMMS at the beginning of 2006 looked like the screenshot on the left. In the following years, we worked hard on the new RAMMS visualization, for the avalanche module.

First attempt of a ROCKFALL module. The rocks were still spheres, using restitution coefficients.

In the meantime, we were doing experiments in Vallée de la Sionne, and Perry started to draw his first ideas of random kinetic energy (RKE) models.

Over the last years, we held many RAMMS workshops all around the world. Alaska, Svalbard, Italy, Russia and Norway are some of the countries we could visit.

Scroll to Top