Jesse Chan ’08 remembers his time at Rice as an undergraduate when a National Science Foundation-funded program inspired a new academic focus and plans for a new career.
“VIGRE, short for Vertical Integration of Research and Education, was instrumental in kick-starting my interest in computational and applied mathematics through undergraduate research,” said Chan, assistant professor of computational applied mathematics and operations research (CMOR).
“I’m looking forward to being on the other side of the research and mentoring opportunities that shaped me.”
He refers to a five-year, $2.3 million grant from the NSF for the RTG Numerical Mathematics and Scientific Computing (NASC). Its principal investigator is Beatrice Riviere, Noah Harding Chair and Professor of CMOR.
“With the grant we will form what the NSF calls RTGs or Research Training Groups. Our goal is to train the next generation of scientists to advance NASC and its applications in many areas of engineering and science,” Riviere said.
The RTG NASC funding will support research conducted by graduate and undergraduate students, and postdocs in CMOR. The research will be interdisciplinary, involving such other disciplines as electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and earth, environmental and planetary sciences. Rice teams will collaborate with researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine.
“Another goal is to increase participation, especially of women and underrepresented minorities, in mathematical sciences,” Riviere said. “We will strengthen the preparation of researchers in computational and applied mathematics for careers in academia and industry.”
Her co-principal investigators are Chan and Matthias Heinkenschloss, Noah Harding Chair and Professor of CMOR.
“These are not fundamentally new goals for us,” Heinkenschloss said. “In fact, our research accomplishments and our successes in training the next generation were crucial to winning this award. However, this RTG will allow us to substantially broaden our activities and their reach.”
Participants will be trained in such specialties as mathematical modeling, design and analysis of numerical methods, and best practices in scientific software engineering. This training will introduce them to what Riviere calls “frontiers of research” in such fields as next-generation high-order numerical methods for physics-based simulations, structure-preserving and data-driven reduced order modeling, and large-scale optimization methods for problems governed by differential equations.
“We plan to implement a number of important community-building and outreach activities to benefit a wide range of students. Examples include mentoring at different levels, workshops and seminars on technical themes and professional development, and the Summer Math Days for high school students,” Heinkenschloss said