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Faculty News
(December 2007)
Professor Michael Heath has received the Apple Award for
Innovation in Science from Apple Corp. The award, of which only
ten were given nationally, was created to recognize excellence in
scientific endeavor and to foster increased collaboration between
Apple and the scientific community. Through this award, Apple
honors achievments and distinctive use of technology in scientific
work.
Alumni News
(November 2007)
Illinois alumnus and Stanford University Professor Gene Golub,
one of the world's leading numerical analysts for the past forty years,
passed away on November 16, a victim of acute myeloid leukemia. Golub
received all three of his degrees from Illinois, taking his PhD in 1959
under Professor Abraham Taub. Golub's influence on both the
theory and practice of scientific computing was profound, both through
his vast range of technical research contributions and his professional
leadership of the entire scientific computing community nationally and
internationally.
Golub had served on the Stanford faculty since 1962, including a term
as Chair of the Computer Science Department 1981-1984 and Director of
the Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics Program,
1988-1998. He served as President of SIAM 1985-1987 and was founding
editor of both SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing and SIAM
Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications. His founding of
Golub was also legendary for his encouragement and mentoring of young researchers just becoming established in the field. Another example of his generosity was his endowment of the Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professorship in Computer Science at Illinois, in honor of his longstanding friendship with the Saylors, as well as the Hohn-Nash Scholarship in honor of two of his teachers at Illinois, Franz Hohn and J. P. Nash.
Golub's many honors included membership in both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, numerous honorary degrees, and having his collected papers published by Oxford University Press. Among the nearly thirty PhD students Golub produced is Professor Michael Heath, currently Interim Head of the Department of Computer Science at Illinois.
Gene will be sorely missed by the worldwide numerical analysis community, which owes him an enormous debt of gratitude both for his many seminal research contributions and his generous and inspiring leadership.
Distinguished Visitor
(November 2007)
Illinois alumnus Joe Grcar of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory visited November 7-9 to present a series of three lectures
on the early history of scientific computing, Von Neumann's 1947 paper
that founded modern numerical analysis, and combustion flame modeling.
New Faculty
(October 2007)
Bill Gropp has joined the faculty as the first the Paul and
Cindy Saylor Professor in Computer Science. This new professorship was
endowed by alumnus Gene Golub and is named for Emeritus
Professor Paul Saylor and his wife Cindy Saylor. Bill
received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and
served on the faculty at Yale University before moving on to a long and
successful tenure at Argonne National Laboratory. Bill is well known
for his work in parallel and scientific computing, including the
development of MPI, the PETSc toolkit, and domain decomposition methods
for parallel solution of PDEs.
PhD Prelim Exam
(September 2007)
Eric Cyr passed his PhD preliminary examination. His
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Bond, is concerned with
numerical computation of free energies.
PhD Final Exam
(September 2007)
Shun Wang passed his PhD final examination on September 7. His
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is concerned with
Krylov subspace methods for topology optimization on adaptive meshes.
Shun has accepted a position with Credit Suisse in New York following
graduation.
New Students
(August 2007)
We welcome two new graduate students for the Fall term: Hormozd
Gahvari, who is a BS alumnus returning to pursue a PhD at Illinois
after completing his MS at UC-Berkeley, and Peng Jiang from
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications in China.
Student News
(August 2007)
Graduate student Hanna Neradt and her husband Brian became the
parents of a their first child, a 6 lb, 11 oz baby girl Esther Joy Neradt, born at 6:37pm on
August 12.
Alumni News
(August 2007)
Alumna Rebecca Hartman-Baker, now a staff member at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, visited on August 6. She gave a talk about her
recent work on parallel load balancing and joined current graduate
students and faculty for the monthly NA lunch.
Student News
(August 2007)
Graduate student Bill Cochran and his wife Kristine became the
parents of a their first child, a 7 lb, 14 oz baby boy Evan Christopher Cochran, born at 9:49pm on
August 4.
Faculty News
(July 2007)
Professor Anil Hirani has been awarded a Faculty Early Career
Development (CAREER) Award by the National Science Foundation. This
prestigious award provides five years of funding for his proposed
research on algebraic topology and exterior calculus in numerical
analysis.
Faculty News
(July 2007)
Professor Michael Heath has been named Interim Head of the
Department of Computer Science effective July 25, 2007. Heath
replaces Professor Marc Snir, who is moving on to become
Director of the Illinois Informatics Initiative.
Summer Internships
(Summer 2007)
Several graduate students are spending the summer as
interns, including
Nana Arizumi at ETH Zurich,
Jacob Schroder at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore,
Michael Wolf at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,
Michael Turnley at the National Security Agency, and
Nathan Bell and
Andrew Colombi at NVidia.
Shun Wang is spending the summer at Virginia Tech working with
his advisor, former Illinois faculty member Prof. Eric de
Sturler.
PhD Final Exam
(May 2007)
Hanna Neradt passed her PhD final examination on May 16. Her
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Heath, is concerned with
null space methods for solving partitial differential equations.
Hanna's next major project will be the birth of her first child,
expected in August.
Distinguished Visitor
(April 2007)
Illinois alumnus Prof. Tom Manteuffel of the University of
Colorado at Boulder visited on April 30 to present a talk on methods
for solving Maxwell's equations with edge singularities in the
Distinguished Lecturer Series of the Department of Computer Science.
PhD Final Exam
(April 2007)
David Alber passed his PhD final examination on April 13. His
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Olson, is concerned with
efficient setup algorithms for parallel algebraic multigrid. David has
accepted a postdoctoral position at the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado following
graduation.
Faculty News
(April 2007)
Prof. Luke Olson and his wife Kjellrun became the parents of a
their first child, a 7 lb, 9 oz baby daughter
Ana Britt Olson, born at 8:53pm on April
12. Mother and baby are doing well, but Luke was somewhat the worse
for wear at a PhD final exam the following morning.
Distinguished Visitors
(April 2007)
Dr. Paul Fischer of Argonne National Laboratory and Illinois
alumnus Prof. Michael Holst of UC San Diego visited on April 10
as keynote speakers for the annual CSE Symposium.
CSE Fellows Eric Cyr and Evan VanderZee were among the
student presenters.
Conference News
(March 2007)
Illinois was well represented at the Stanford 50 Conference on
the State of the Art and Future Directions of Computational Mathematics
and Numerical Computing held March 29-31 at Stanford University.
Professor Michael Heath served as a session chair and as a judge
for the graduate student poster competition. A highlight of the
conference was a banquet in honor of the 75th birthday of Illinois
alumnus Gene Golub. Other current and former Illinois students
and faculty attending included Steve Ashby, Bill Gear, Joe Grcar, Mark
Hoemmen, Steve Lee, Linda Petzold, Ahmed Sameh, Paul Saylor, Uday
Shanbhag, Tamar Shinar, and Paul Van Dooren.
Distinguished Visitor
(March 2007)
Dr. Bill Gropp of Argonne National Labboratory visited on March
26-27 and presented a lecture in the CS Colloquium on challenges for
MPI in the petaflops era.
Conference News
(March 2007)
Graduate students David Alber and Nathan Bell
presented talks at the
13th Copper
Mountain Conference on Multigrid Methods in Copper Mountain,
Colorado, March 19–23. David's topic was bucket sorted
independent sets and Nathan's topic was algebraic multigrid for
discrete Laplacians.
Alumni News
(March 2007)
Alumnus Chris Siefert, now a postdoc at Sandia National
Laboratories, visited on March 9 and joined current graduate students
and faculty for the monthly NA lunch.
NA Qual Results
(February 2007)
Nana Arizumi and Adam Reichert passed the PhD qualifying
examination in Numerical Analysis and will now proceed with their PhD
thesis research. Nana is working with Prof. Bond and Adam is working
with Prof. Hirani.
Conference News
(February 2007)
Prof. Stephen Bond and graduate students David Alber,
Eric Cyr, and Evan VanderZee presented talks at the SIAM Conference on
Computational Science and Engineering in Costa Mesa, California,
February 19–23. Prof. Bond also chaired a session on molecular
modeling. David Alber and graduate student Michael Wolf also
presented posters at the SIAM Workshop on Combinatorial Scientific
Computing held in conjunction with the main conference.
Alumni News
(December 2006)
Alumna Jessica Schoen, a former undergraduate advisee of Prof.
Heath and now a graduate student at the University of California,
Berkeley, visited during her semester break. At Berkeley, Jessica is
working with Prof. Jonathan Shewchuk on developing new methods for
robust anisotropic mesh generation.
NA Qual Results
(October 2006)
Jehanzeb Hameed Chaudhry, Andrew Colombi, and Michael
Turnley passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical Analysis
and will now proceed with their PhD thesis research. Jehanzeb and
Andrew both work with Prof. Hirani, and Michael works with Prof. Bond.
Alumni News
(October 2006)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker and her husband Jeff became the parents of
a their first child, a 7 lb, 11 oz baby boy
Vincent David Hartman-Baker, born at
6:25pm on October 5.
Faculty News
(September 2006)
Prof. Michael Heath visited Harvard University on September 21
and presented a lecture on challenges in multiphysics simulations.
Prof. Luke Olson attended the Algebraic Multigrid Summit
September 25-28 in Lake City, CO. The annual workshop invites
researchers to discuss current computational, theoretical, and
application challenges in the AMG solution process.
Student News
(Late Summer 2006)
Congratulations to three of our graduate students who were recently
married: Mark Gates to Cindy Sturgeon on July 22, Hanna
VanderZee to Brian Neradt on August 19, and Eric Cyr to
Lauren Teffeau on September 16.
Summer Internships
(Summer 2006)
Russ Hewett is working with Dr. Peter Gallagher at Trinity
College in Dublin, Ireland, on extracting the power spectrum from an
image using wavelets, as part of an international solar monitoring
project. Russ presented a poster on his work at the annual conference
of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society.
Adam Reichert is working with Illinois alumnus Dr. Ali
Pinar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on analyzing the
reliability of electrical power networks using nonlinear optimization.
Jacob Schroder is working with Dr. Raymond Tuminaro at Sandia
National Laboratories in Livermore, CA, on ways to combine smoothed
aggregation and compatible relaxation in algebraic multigrid.
Michael Turnley is working with Jeff Reiss at the National
Security Agency in Ft. Meade, MD, on application middleware enterprise
applications. Evan VanderZee is working with Dr. Patrick Knupp
at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque on mesh optimization.
Shun Wang is working at Credit Suisse in New York City on
computational techniques for identifying speculation opportunities from
historical and current market data. Michael Wolf is working
with Karen Devine, Brian Adams, and Erik Boman at Sandia National
Laboratories in Albuquerque on agent-based disease propagation models
to be used in the inverse problem of disease characterization from
patient data.
PhD Prelim Exam
(June 2006)
Bill Cochran passed his PhD preliminary examination. His
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Heath, is concerned with
generic mesh data structures, mesh partitioning, and mesh-based linear
solvers.
Alumni News
(June 2006)
Alumnus Henry Neeman, a former PhD student of Prof. Heath now at
the University of Oklahoma, has been named one of 16 "People to Watch"
in high performance computing by industry newsletter
HPCwire.
Visitor
(May 2006)
Prof. Dongbin Xiu of Purdue University visited on May 31 and
presented a seminar on stochastic modeling and uncertainty
quantification in engineering applications.
PhD Prelim Exam
(May 2006)
David Alber passed his PhD preliminary examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. Olson, is concerned with parallel
coarse grid selection strategies for algebraic multigrid.
Graduate Fellowship Awards
(May 2006)
Two of our graduate students have been awarded graduate fellowships in
an annual competition sponsored by the Computational Science and
Engineering Program. Eric Cyr, advised by Prof. Bond, won with
a proposal entitled "Multilevel Iterative Methods for Solving the
Poisson-Boltzmann Equation". Evan VanderZee, advised by Prof.
Hirani, won with a proposal entitled "Well-Centered Meshing". Evan's
fellowship is jointly funded by the Applied Mathematics Program. In
addition to these, Prof. Olson is co-advisor for another winning
fellowship proposal by a student from the TAM department. A total
of nine fellowships were awarded across all departments.
PhD Prelim Exams
(April 2006)
Hanna VanderZee passed her PhD preliminary examination. Her
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Heath, is concerned with
null space methods for solving partial differential equations.
Shun Wang passed his PhD preliminary examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is concerned with
solvers and preconditioners for topology optimization with adaptive
mesh refinement.
Distinguished Visitors
(April 2006)
Dr. John Drake of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Dr.
Bill Gropp of Argonne National Laboratory visited on April 13
as keynote speakers for the annual CSE Symposium.
Conference News
(April 2006)
Prof. Luke Olson and graduate student David Alber
presented talks at the Ninth Copper
Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods in Copper Mountain,
Colorado, April 2–7. Luke's talk was on algebraic multigrid
preconditioning for high-order spectral elements, and David's talk was
on parallel coarse grid selection strategies for algebraic multigrid.
Others in attendance at the conference included alumni Chris
Siefert and Dennis Smolarski and former faculty member
Eric de Sturler.
Student / Alumni News
(March 2006)
Prof. Heath recently received important personal news from four of his
current or former PhD students. Current student Hanna VanderZee
announced her engagement to be married to Brian Neradt, who is employed
by Motorola in Champaign. The wedding is planned for August 19.
Current student Mark Gates announced his engagement to be
married to Cindy Sturgeon, who is a teacher at Mahomet-Seymour High
School. The wedding is planned for July 22. Former student Rebecca
Hartman-Baker, now at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and her
husband Jeff are expecting their first child, with the due date
approximately October 1. Former student Vanessa Lopez has
recently moved from her postdoctoral position at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory to a research staff position at IBM's T. J. Watson
Research Center in New York.
NA Qual Results
(February 2006)
Mark Gates and Jacob Schroder passed the PhD qualifying
examination in Numerical Analysis and will now proceed with their PhD
thesis research. Mark is working on variational integrators for
multiphysics coupling under the direction of Prof. Heath and Dr. Karel
Matous. Jacob is working on preconditioning strategies for systems
arising from problems in fluid dynamics under the direction of Prof.
Olson.
Faculty News
(January 2006)
Prof. Eric de Sturler is leaving Illinois to assume a faculty
position in the Department of Mathematics at Virginia Tech beginning
in January.
PhD Final Exam
(January 2006)
Chris Siefert passed his PhD final examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is concerned with
preconditioners for generalized saddle-point problems. Chris has
accepted a postdoctoral position at Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque following graduation.
Faculty News
(January 2006)
The Department of Computer Science has announced the establishment of
the Paul and Cindy Saylor Professorship in Computer Science. The new
Professorship was endowed through a generous donation from Stanford
University Prof. Gene Golub, an Illinois alumnus and long-time
supporter of the Department. The gift was bestowed in honor of Golub's
long-standing friendship with Prof. Emeritus Paul Saylor and his
wife Cindy.
Student News
(December 2005)
Zhen Cheng has completed her M.S. degree in Computer Science.
Her thesis, written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is
concerned with Krylov solvers for error smoothing for strongly
anisotropic problems on structured AMR meshes. Zhen has accepted a
position with Morgan Stanley begining in February 2006.
Faculty News
(November 2005)
Prof. Michael Heath visited the University of Minnesota on
November 7-8 and presented the Cray Distinguished Lecture on challenges
in large-scale multiphysics simulations.
Distinguished Visitors
(November 2005)
Dr. Paul Fischer of Argonne National Laboratory visited on
November 2 and presented a seminar on spectral element methods.
Dr. Rich Lehoucq of Sandia National Laboratories visited on
November 9-10 and presented a seminar on multilevel methods for
eigenspace computations in structural dynamics.
Distinguished Visitor
(October 2005)
Prof. Stephen Vavasis of Cornell University visited on October
26-27 and presented a seminar on near linear time solution of elliptic
differential equations using support-graph preconditioners.
Student News
(October 2005)
Michael Turnley attended the Richard Tapia
Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in Albuquerque,
NM, October 19-22, and gave a presentation on Hamiltonian Systems.
Faculty News
(October 2005)
Prof. Michael Heath presented seminars on challenges in
large-scale multiphysics simulations at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
on October 11 and the University of Tennessee on October 12.
NA Qual Results
(September 2005)
Michael Wolf passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical
Analysis and will now proceed with his PhD thesis research under the
direction of Prof. Heath. His research interests are in parallel
scientific computing.
New Faculty
(August 2005)
We welcome two new faculty members for the Fall term: Anil
Hirani received his PhD degree from Caltech in 2003 and
subsequently held a postdoctoral fellowship at JPL. Prof. Hirani's
research interests are in discrete differential geometry, geometric
numerical analysis, and their applications such as computational
mechanics. Luke Olson received his PhD degree from the
University of Colorado in 2003 and subsequently held a postdoctoral
fellowship at Brown University. Prof. Olson's research interests are
in high-order methods for partial differential equations and their
applications such as computational electromagnetics.
Summer Internships
(Summer 2005)
Mark Gates is working with Illinois alumnus Dr. Steven
Lee at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on building a
user-friendly interface in Python to existing ODE solvers. Jacob
Schroder is working with Dr. Raymond Tuminaro and Dr. Victoria
Howle at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore on
pressure-convection diffusion preconditioners for incompressible
Navier-Stokes problems. Evan VanderZee is working with
Dr. Patrick Knupp at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque
on mesh optimization.
PhD Final Exam
(June 2005)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker passed her PhD final examination. Her
thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Heath, is concerned with
the diffusion equation method for global optimization and its
application to magnetotelluric geoprospecting. Rebecca has accepted a
postdoctoral position at Oak Ridge National Laboratory following
graduation.
Conference News
(June 2005)
Prof. Stephen Bond participated in the
Workshop on Mathematical Issues in Molecular Dynamics at the Banff
International Research Station in Banff, Alberta, Canada, June 4-9.
Other participants included Illinois alumni Jesus Izaguirre (now
at University of Notre Dame) and Ben Leimkuhler (now at
University of Leceister), as well as former Illinois faculty member
Robert Skeel (now at Purdue University).
Faculty News
(June 2005)
Prof. Michael Heath chaired an external review panel for the Computational Research Division at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, June 2-3. Another member of the
panel was Illinois alumna Prof. Linda Petzold of UC Santa
Barbara. Division staff include Illinois alumni Joe Grcar,
Vanessa Lopez, and Ali Pinar.
Conference News
(May 2005)
Prof. Stephen Bond attended the SciCADE05
International Conference on Scientific Computation and Differential
Equations in Nagoya, Japan, May 23-27. He presented a talk on
estimating accuracy in averages from molecular dyanamics simulations.
Another speaker in the same minisymposium was Illinois alumnus
Prof. Jesus Izaguirre, now at the University of Notre Dame.
Conference News
(May 2005)
Profs. Eric de Sturler and Michael Heath participated in
the Householder Symposium XVI
on Numerical Linear Algebra held at Seven Springs Mountain Resort
in Champion, Pennsylvania, on May 23-27. Prof. de Sturler gave a
presentation on recycling Krylov subspaces for sequences of linear
systems. The triennial Householder Symposium is the premier
international conference in numerical linear algebra.
Student News
(May 2005)
Jessica Schoen, a graduating senior advised by Prof. Michael
Heath, has won the C. W. Gear Award (named in honor of Illinois
alumnus Bill Gear) as outstanding Computer Science major in the
class of 2005. Last year Jessica won the Hohn-Nash Scholarship
(endowed by Illinois alumnus Prof. Gene Golub), given annually
to the most outstanding undergraduate student in scientific computing.
After a summer internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
Jessica will enter graduate school in the Fall at UC Berkeley, where
she will work with Prof. Jonathan Shewchuck in the scientific computing
group there.
Faculty News
(May 2005)
Prof. Michael Heath visited Cornell University on May 9-10 and
gave a talk on challenges in computational science and engineering.
PhD Final Exam
(May 2005)
David Hardy passed his PhD final examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. Skeel, is concerned with
multilevel summation for fast evaluation of forces in biomolecular
simulations.
Distinguished Visitors
(April 2005)
Dr. Jay Boris of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Prof.
Nikos Chrisochoides of the College of William & Mary visited on
April 21 as keynote speakers for the annual CSE Symposium.
Faculty News
(April 2005)
Dr. Luke Olson has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in
the Department of Computer Science beginning Fall 2005. Luke received
his PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003 and is
currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Divison of Applied Mathematics
at Brown University. His research interests include multilevel methods
and high-order spectral element methods for partial differential
equations, along with multigrid and preconditioned iterative methods
for linear systems, and applications to electromagnetics.
Faculty News
(April 2005)
Prof. Eric de Sturler has been invited to joint the editorial
board of Applied Numerical Mathematics, an IMACS journal
published by Elsevier.
Conference News
(April 2005)
Graduate students David Alber and Zhen Cheng presented
talks at the Twelfth Copper
Mountain Conference on Multigrid Methods in Copper Mountain,
Colorado, April 3–8. David's talk was on coarse grid selection
to attain lower complexities, and Zhen's talk was on adaptive multigrid
for strongly anisotropic problems.
PhD Final Exam
(March 2005)
Wei Wang passed his PhD final examination. His thesis, written
under the direction of Prof. Skeel, is concerned with fast polarizable
force field computation in biomolecular simulations. Wei plans to work
for Goldman-Sachs following graduation.
Distinguished Visitor
(March 2005)
Dr. Luke Olson of Brown University visited on March 17-18 and
presented a seminar on efficient techniques for higher-order methods
for solving partial differential equations.
NA Qual Results
(February 2005)
Eric Cyr passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical
Analysis and will now proceed with his PhD thesis research under the
direction of Prof. Bond. His research topic is methods for calculating
potentials of mean force for molecular systems.
Conference News
(February 2005)
Graduate students Chris Siefert and Shun Wang attended
the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering in Orlando
February 12-15. Both gave presentations, as did recent PhD graduate
Michael Parks, all three of whom are students of Prof. Eric
de Sturler, who served as Co-Chair of the conference.
Prof. Michael Heath also attended the conference and served
on a panel discussion on CSE education.
Dedication Ceremony
(February 2005)
A ceremony was held on February 8 dedicating the new Turing Xserve Cluster. The
ceremony and associated reception and open house were attended by the
Vice Chancellor for Research, the Dean of the College of Engineering,
and the Vice President for Education at Apple Computer.
Prof. Michael Heath coordinated the acquisition of this
1280-processor parallel supercomputer, which is available to the
students, faculty, and staff of the university for large-scale
simulations in scientific computing.
Conference News
(January 2005)
Hanna VanderZee, a student of Prof. Heath, attended the Joint
AMS/MAA meeting January 5-8 in Atlanta, GA. She also plans to
attend the ACMS Biennial Conference June 1-4 in Huntington, IN.
PhD Final Exam
(December 2004)
Michael Parks passed his PhD final examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is concerned with
the iterative solution of a sequence of linear systems arising from
nonlinear finite element analysis. Michael is now working at
Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.
Conference News
(November 2004)
Graduate students Bill Cochran and Rebecca Hartman-Baker
attended the Supercomputing 04 Conference in Pittsburgh November 8-12
and participated in the Student Days program. Rebecca gave a
presentation on her PhD thesis research and served on a graduate school
panel advising undergraduate students on graduate opportunities in
computational science. Bill and Rebecca also participated in a booth
sponsored by the Department of Energy for recruiting prospective
graduate students.
PhD Prelim Exam
(November 2004)
Chris Siefert passed his PhD preliminary examination.
His thesis, written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is concerned
with preconditioners for generalized saddle point problems.
New Students
(August 2004)
We welcome three new graduate students for the Fall term: Mark
Gates received his undergraduate degree from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jacob Schroder from Furman
University, and Michael Turnley from Norfolk State University.
Mark and Jacob are working as Teaching Assistants for the Fall term,
while Michael, who holds a National Physical Science Consortium
Fellowship, is working with Prof. Bond.
Distinguished Visitor
(July 2004)
Prof. Mark Shephard, Director of the Scientific Computing
Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, visited on July
27-28 and presented a seminar on mesh modification for general adaptive
mesh control.
Faculty News
(July 2004)
A retirement reception was held in honor of Prof. Robert Skeel
at the Siebel Center on July 23. In addition to Prof. Skeel's
colleagues in the Department of Computer Science, special guests
included Prof. Skeel's wife and two daughters, and his former graduate
student Jesus Izaguirre, now a faculty member at University of
Notre Dame. Festivities included delicious refreshments and an amusing
skit performed by several graduate students. As a going-away gift,
Prof. Skeel received a Waterford crystal platter.
Conference News
(July 2004)
Graduate student Rebecca Hartman-Baker gave a poster
presentation on the diffusion equation method for global optimization
at the SIAM National Meeting in Portland, Oregon on July 13.
Profs. Michael Heath and Robert Skeel also attended the
conference.
New Faculty
(July 2004)
Dr. Anil Hirani has accepted a faculty position as an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He will join us in
Fall 2005 after completing a postdoctoral appointment during the coming
academic year at Caltech. Dr. Hirani's research interests include
discrete exterior calculus and its applications in mechanics, dynamical
systems, electromagnetics, computer graphics, and computer vision,
among other areas.
Conference News
(June 2004)
Prof. Michael Heath presented an invited plenary lecture
on parallel simulation of multicomponent systems at the
VECPAR 04
International Conference on High Performance Computing for
Computational Science held in Valencia, Spain, June 28-30, 2004.
Alumni News
(June 2004)
2003 M.S. graduate Robert Engle, who now works for IBM in
Rochester, Minnesota, reports that the 1/16 size BlueGene computer
recently installed there has taken fourth place on the Top 500 list for
June 2004 that was just announced. In personal news, Robert reports
that he was married in April.
Student News
(June 2004)
Graduate student Rebecca Hartman-Baker gave a short course on
supercomputing to minority high school students participating in the
JEF/MSI workshop, June 14-18, at the NCSA ACCESS Center in Arlington,
Virginia.
PhD Prelim Exam
(June 2004)
Michael Parks passed his PhD preliminary examination.
His thesis, written under the direction of Prof. de Sturler, is concerned
with iterative methods and preconditioners for solving linear systems
arising in nonlinear finite element analysis.
Faculty News
(May 2004)
Prof. Robert Skeel has announced his retirement from Illinois
effective this summer. Beginning in the fall, he will assume a faculty
position in the Computer Sciences Department at Purdue University.
Prof. Skeel will be sorely missed, but fortunately ongoing research
projects and geographic proximity should bring him back often.
Student News
(May 2004)
Jessica Schoen, a junior advised by Prof. Michael Heath,
was named winner of the Hohn-Nash Scholarship (endowed by Illinois
alumnus Prof. Gene Golub), given annually to the most
outstanding undergraduate student in scientific computing.
Distinguished Visitor
(May 2004)
Prof. Misha Kilmer of Tufts University visited on May 4-5 and
presented a seminar on reuse-based iterative solvers for 3D imaging in
optical tomography.
PhD Prelim Exam
(May 2004)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker passed her PhD preliminary examination.
Her thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Heath, is concerned
with the diffusion equation method for global optimization applied to
an inverse problem in geophysics.
Distinguished Visitors
(April 2004)
Dr. Lori Freitag Diachin of Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and Prof. Chris Johnson of the University of Utah
visited on April 27 as keynote speakers for the annual CSE Symposium.
Distinguished Visitor
(April 2004)
Dr. Oren Livne of Stanford University visited on April 5-6 and
presented a seminar on bootstrap algebraic multigrid.
Conference News
(April 2004)
Graduate students Zhen Cheng and Shun Wang, along with
their advisor Prof. Eric de Sturler, attended the Eighth Copper
Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods in Copper Mountain,
Colorado, March 28–April 2. Zhen and Shun both presented talks on their
PhD thesis research in progress.
Conference News
(March 2004)
Prof. Eric de Sturler has been named Co-Chair for the SIAM
Conference on Computational Science and Engineering to be held in
Orlando, Florida, February 10-15, 2005.
Distinguished Visitors
(March 2004)
Prof. Tinsley Oden of the University of Texas, Austin
visited on March 2 and presented a seminar on estimation and control of
modeling error for random heterogeneous materials.
Prof. Craig Douglas of the University of Kentucky visited on
March 3 and presented a seminar on virtual telemetry for dynamic
data-driven application simulations.
NA Qual Results
(February 2004)
Shun Wang passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical
Analysis and will now proceed with his PhD thesis research under the
direction of Prof. de Sturler. His research topic is approximate
inverse preconditioners for linear systems.
Alumni News
(February 2004)
Prof. Linda Petzold of UC-Santa Barbara has been elected to
the National Academy of Engineering. Petzold is a former PhD student
of Prof. Bill Gear at Illinois. She joins Gear and Prof.
Gene Golub among Illinois scientific computing alumni in the
prestigious NAE, the largest such contingent from any single
university.
Conference News
(February 2004)
Profs. Eric de Sturler and Michael Heath and graduate
student Michael Wolf attended the SIAM Conference on Parallel
Processing for Scientific Computing in San Francisco. Heath gave
an invited plenary talk, Wolf gave a contributed talk, and de Sturler
is an officer of the SIAM Activity Group on Supercomputing, which
sponsored the conference. The conference was followed by a Workshop on
Combinatorial Scientific Computing, at which two of the invited speakers
were Paul Hovland and Ali Pinar, both former PhD students
of Prof. Heath.
Distinguished Visitor
(February 2004)
Prof. Inderjit Dhillon of the University of Texas, Austin
visited on February 12-13 and presented two seminars on fast
computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors for dense symmetric
matrices and on matrix approximations in information-theoretic
clustering.
Siebel Center
(January 2004)
Along with the rest of the Department of Computer Science, the faculty
and students of the Scientific Computing Group have moved into the new
Siebel Center for Computer Science, located in the adjacent block
to the northeast of DCL. We occupy the southeast portion of the fourth
floor. Our laboratory is in room 4335, and our secretary is located in
room 4322 of Siebel Center.
PhD Final Exam
(January 2004)
Vanessa Lopez passed her PhD final examination. Her thesis,
written under the joint direction of Profs. Heath, Moser (TAM/Illinois),
and Boyland (Math/U. Florida) is concerned with computing relative
periodic solutions to chaotic partial differential equations.
Conference News
(January 2004)
Profs. Michael Heath and Paul Saylor
attended the SVG Meeting at Stanford University
celebrating the 60th birthdays of Michael Saunders,
James Varah, and Alan George.
Faculty News
(January 2004)
Prof. Michael Heath has been elected to the Council
of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).
Supercomputer Allocation Award
(December 2003)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker and her advisor, Prof. Heath, have been
awarded an allocation of 110,000 service units of computer time on
NCSA's parallel supercomputers for the coming year, to be used for
their research on global optimization.
Alumni News
(December 2003)
Robert Engle, who recently completed his MS degree working with
Prof. Skeel, has accepted a position with IBM in Rochester, Minnesota,
where he will be working on performance analysis for the Blue Gene
supercomputer.
Greg Mackey, who recently completed his MS degree working with
Prof. de Sturler, has accepted a position with IBM in Dallas, Texas,
where he will be working in consulting.
Faculty News
(December 2003)
Prof. Eric de Sturler presented an invited talk on
preconditioners for generalized saddle-point problems at the
Workshop on Solution Methods for Saddle Point Problems in
Computational Mechanics in Santa Fe, New Mexico organized by Sandia
National Laboratories.
Distinguished Visitor
(November 2003)
Prof. Yousef Saad of the University of Minnesota visited on
November 6-7 and presented a seminar on computational challenges and
solution algorithms in electronic structure calculations.
Conference News
(October 2003)
Graduate students Michael Parks and Chris Siefert, along
with their advisor Prof. de Sturler, attended the Preconditioning
2003 conference in Napa, California. Mike and Chris both presented
talks on their PhD thesis research in progress.
Faculty News
(October 2003)
Prof. Eric de Sturler presented an invited talk on updating,
truncating, and recycling Krylov subspaces at the Seminar on
Theoretical and Computational Aspects of Matrix Algorithms in
Dagstuhl, Germany.
NA Qual Results
(October 2003)
Zhen Cheng passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical
Analysis and will now proceed with her PhD thesis research under the
direction of Prof. de Sturler. Her research topic is multigrid
preconditioners for linear systems.
Distinguished Visitors
(September 2003)
Profs. Michele Benzi of Emory University, Illinois alumnus Gene
Golub of Stanford University, and Daniel Szyld of Temple
University visited September 3-5 to participate in a local conference
on Markov Chains. All three also gave NA seminars while on campus.
New Students
(August 2003)
We welcome three new graduate students for the Fall term:
Eric Cyr received his undergraduate degree from Clemson
University and will be working as an RA with Prof. Skeel.
Joseph Schulz received his BS degree from Illinois and MS from
Washington University in St. Louis, and will be working as an RA
with Prof. Heath.
Michael Wolf received his undergraduate degree from Harvey Mudd
College and has also worked at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Michael holds a DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
New Faculty
(August 2003)
We welcome a new faculty member for the Fall term: Stephen Bond
received his PhD degree from the University of Kansas in 2000 and
subsequently held a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSD. Prof. Bond's
research specialty is numerical methods for simulating physical systems
in biochemistry and statistical mechanics.
Conference News
(July 2003)
Bill Cochran, a student of Prof. Heath, attended the 7th U.S.
National Congress on Computational Mechanics in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Summer Internships
(July 2003)
Three graduate students are enjoying summer internships:
David Alber at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
Bill Cochran at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,
and Naomi Caldwell at the National Security Agency.
Conference News
(July 2003)
Graduate students Michael Parks and Chris Siefert, along
with their advisor Prof. de Sturler, attended the SIAM Conference
on Applied Linear Algebra in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Visiting Alumni
(May 2003)
Dr. Ali Pinar, a former PhD student of Prof. Heath and now at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, visited on May 23 and gave a
seminar on the "nice" basis problem.
Prof. Vivek Sarin, a former PhD student of Prof. Ahmed Sameh at
Illinois and now at Texas A&M University, visited on May 19 and gave a
seminar on efficient algorithms for problems arising in electromagnetics.
Faculty News
(May 2003)
Prof. Eric de Sturler has been elected Program Director
of the SIAM Activity Group on Supercomputing.
Conference News
(May 2003)
Vanessa Lopez attended the SIAM Conference on Dynamical
Systems in Snowbird, Utah, and gave a presentation on her PhD
thesis research in progress under the joint direction of Profs. Heath,
Moser (TAM/Illinois), and Boyland (Math/U. Florida).
Fellowship Award
(May 2003)
Michael Parks, a student of Prof. de Sturler, has been
awarded a Computational Science and Engineering Fellowship for
academic year 2003-2004. CSE Fellowships are awarded based on
a campus-wide competition, and this is Michael's second such award.
Distinguished Visitors
(April 2003)
Profs. Somnath Ghosh of Ohio State University and George
Karniadakis of Brown University visited on April 25 to participate
as featured keynote speakers in our annual Computational Science and
Engineering Symposium.
Fellowship Award
(April 2003)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker, a student of Prof. Heath, has been
awarded an NSF Graduate Teaching Fellowship in K-12 Education. The term
of the Fellowship is for one year, beginning August 1. The purpose of
the GK-12 program is to integrate the use of computer-based modeling,
scientific visualization, and informatics into science and mathematics
education. Rebecca will work with teachers and students at Hinsdale
High School in suburban Chicago.
Faculty News
(April 2003)
An investiture ceremony was held on April 7 installing Prof.
Michael Heath as the first Fulton Watson Copp Chair in Computer
Science. The chair was endowed through a bequest to the Department of
Computer Science by the late Mr. Copp. The ceremony, moderated by
Prof. David Daniel, Dean of the College of Engineering, was attended by
Mrs. Copp, her son and daughter-in-law, and numerous other guests,
including Prof. Jesus Izaguirre, a former MS student of Prof.
Heath and PhD student of Prof. Skeel now at University of Notre Dame.
In addition to an annual research stipend, which he is currently using
to support graduate students Vanessa Lopez and Hanna VanderZee, Prof.
Heath also received a commemorative medallion.
PhD Prelim Exam
(March 2003)
Wei Wang passed his PhD preliminary examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. Skeel, is concerned with fast
polarizable force field computations in biomolecular simulations.
NA Qual Results
(February 2003)
Bill Cochran passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical
Analysis and will now proceed with his PhD thesis research under the
direction of Prof. Heath. His research topic is mesh-based
partitioners and solvers for linear systems.
PhD Prelim Exam
(January 2003)
Vanessa Lopez passed her PhD preliminary examination. Her
thesis, written under the joint direction of Profs. Heath, Moser
(TAM/Illinois), and Boyland (Math/U. Florida), is concerned with computing
periodic solutions to chaotic partial differential equations.
Faculty News
(January 2003)
Prof. Eric de Sturler has been appointed to the Editorial
Board of SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis as an Associate
Editor.
Supercomputer Allocation Award
(December 2002)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker and her advisor, Prof. Heath, have been
awarded an allocation of 50,000 service units of computer time on
NCSA's parallel supercomputers for the coming year, to be used for
their research on global optimization.
PhD Final Exam
(December 2002)
Wing Fai Chow passed his PhD final examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. Kerkhoven, is concerned with using
Krylov subspace methods to compute eigenstates of various forms of
carbon.
Conference News
(November 2002)
Rebecca Hartman-Baker, a student of Prof. Heath, served
as a student aide at the Supercomputing 2002 conference in
Baltimore, Maryland.
Distinguished Visiting Alumna
(October 2002)
Prof. Linda Petzold, a former PhD student of Prof. Bill Gear
at Illinois and now at UC-Santa Barbara, visited on October 2 and presented
a seminar on adaptive methods for sensitivity analysis of DAEs and
PDEs.
NA Qual Results
(October 2002)
David Alber passed the PhD qualifying examination in Numerical
Analysis and will now proceed with his PhD thesis research under the
direction of Prof. Saylor. His research topic is iterative solvers for
linear systems.
New Students
(August 2002)
We welcome four new graduate students for the Fall term:
Phil Alexander received his undergraduate degree from Bradley
University and will be working as an RA with Prof. Heath.
Robert Engle received his undergraduate degree from St. Olaf
College and will be working as an RA with Prof. Skeel.
Ken Scheiwe received his undergraduate degree from Illinois
and will be working as an RA with Prof. Heath.
Shun Wang received his undergraduate degree from Tsinghua
University and will be working as an RA with Prof. de Sturler.
PhD Final Exam
(August 2002)
Gang Zou passed his PhD final examination. His thesis,
written under the direction of Prof. Skeel, is concerned with
improved numerical methods for simulating Brownian dynamics.
Faculty News
(July 2002)
Prof. Michael Heath has been appointed the first Fulton
Watson Copp Chair in Computer Science. His five-year term begins in
August, and a formal investiture ceremony will be held next Spring.
The Chair, which was endowed through a bequest to the Department of
Computer Science by the late Mr. Copp, will provide an annual stipend
to support Prof. Heath's research.
Conference News
(June 2002)
Profs. Eric de Sturler and Michael Heath attended the
triennial Householder Symposium on numerical linear algebra held
in Peebles, Scotland. Prof. de Sturler presented a plenary lecture on
fast solution methods and preconditioners for symmetric and
nonsymmetric indefinite systems.
Fellowship Award
(May 2002)
Michael Parks, a student of Prof. de Sturler, has been
awarded a Computational Science and Engineering Fellowship for academic
year 2002-2003. CSE Fellowships are awarded based on a campus-wide
competition.
Distinguished Visitors
(April 2002)
Profs. Omar Ghattas of Carnegie Mellon University and David
Keyes of Old Dominion University visited on April 16 to participate
as featured keynote speakers in our annual Computational Science and
Engineering Symposium.
NA Qual Results
(February 2002)
Chris Siefert and Hanna VanderZee passed the PhD
qualifying examination in Numerical Analysis and will now proceed with
their PhD thesis research. Chris is working on iterative methods and
preconditioners for indefinite linear systems under the direction of
Prof. de Sturler. Hanna is working on null space methods for
differential operators under the direction of Prof. Heath.
New Student
(January 2002)
We welcome one new graduate student for the Spring term:
Zhen Cheng received her undergraduate degree from Dalian
University in China and will be working as an RA with Prof. de Sturler.
Conference News
(January 2002)
Hanna VanderZee, a student of Prof. Heath, attended the
Joint AMS/MAA meeting in Baltimore, MD.
Scientific Computing Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 201 N. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USA.