Colloquium Year: 2025

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Golo Wimmer, Los Alamos National Laboratory ABSTRACT: The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations possess a rich underlying structure, including the divergence-free condition of the magnetic field and balanced transfers between kinetic, internal and magnetic energy. Numerical methods that fail to preserve this structure may suffer from reduced accuracy or even […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Mehmet Dogan, San Diego State University (Physics) ABSTRACT: Using density functional theory (DFT) and pseudopotentials, we can accurately describe the electrons in most materials. In practice, though, solving the Kohn–Sham equations (the working equations of DFT) is still very expensive on a computer. This usually limits us to […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Kathryn Maupin, Sandia National Laboratory (Optimization and Uncertainty Quantification) ABSTRACT: Computational simulation has allowed scientists to explore, observe, and test physical regimes previously thought to be unattainable. Bayesian analysis provides a natural framework for incorporating the uncertainties that undeniably exist in computational modeling. However, the ability to perform […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Mohammad Farazmand, North Carolina State University ABSTRACT: Classical spectral methods for numerically solving PDEs assume the solution as the linear combination of prescribed basis functions (or modes). This assumption limits their efficacy for time-dependent multi-scale problems with localized time-varying features. I will first introduce the notion of Shape-Morphing […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Paul Carter, University of CA, Irvine (Department of Mathematics) ABSTRACT: Motivated by the appearance of desertification fronts between bare soil and vegetation in dryland ecosystems, we consider the dynamics of planar interfaces between stable homogeneous rest states in multi-component reaction diffusion equations. On sloped terrain, one can find […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Christopher Douglas, Duke University ABSTRACT: Ongoing concerns about combustion-related greenhouse gas emissions have motivated substantial efforts to integrate alternative fuels such as hydrogen (H2) into existing energy infrastructure. Nonetheless, H2 is characterized by strong reactivity and remarkably high mass diffusion rates, leading to complex combustion dynamics that pose […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Bronson Messer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Leadership Computing Facility) ABSTRACT: The study of stellar explosions touches on a variety of fundamental questions, including the origin of the chemical elements, the formation of neutron stars and black holes, the generation of gravitational waves, and the dynamics of the interstellar […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Juhyeon Bae, San Diego State University (Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering) ABSTRACT: Fatigue and heat strain are persistent challenges in construction work, posing significant threats to workers’ health, safety, and productivity. Wearable technology offers new opportunities to monitor these physiological risks in real time and to design personalized […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: Hans Johansen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division) ABSTRACT: Broadly speaking, computational science is about getting the best answer for a given amount of computing resources. But today’s computing resources include CPUs, GPUs, and supercomputers with 1000’s of nodes, and algorithms perform very differently […]

TIME: 3:30 PM LOCATION: GMCS 314 SPEAKER: John Lowengrub, University of California, Irvine ABSTRACT: Predicting brain tumor infiltration from MRI scans is crucial for understanding tumor progression and optimizing personalized treatment. While mathematical models of tumor growth provide valuable insights, estimating patient specific parameters from clinical data remains a challenging inverse problem due to sparse […]