It's a Friday afternoon and the sixth floor seminar room is teeming with students. What's the draw? “It’s a time to relax and talk in a no-pressure environment - just come in, and show us something you’ve done or are passionate about,” said Jonathan Zhang, who co-hosts the CSEM Student Form at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. For Zhang, facilitating conversation and collaboration have formed the cornerstone of his Oden Institute expereince.
A third-year graduate student in the Computational Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics (CSEM) program, Zhang has become a compelling co-organizer of the CSEM Student Forum. It’s not just the free pizza that’s bringing students - from 1-2pm on Fridays, Zhang works to blend his fellow students’ cutting edge ideas in computational science with a supportive, uplifting environment.
As an undergraduate at UT Austin, Zhang was guided into the field of computational research by Greg Rodin, now Professor Emeritus at the Oden Institute. After spending time as a Moncrief Summer Intern working to build simulations that model and predict experimental approaches in Rodin’s project, he developed a sustained passion for the field, and was encouraged to apply to graduate programs by his mentors.
After the rush of graduate school applications and graduation, Zhang found himself with six months of precious free time before his educational journey resumed. He spent that time working at the Sandia National Laboratories, collaborating with other engineers to run simulations, make predictions, and compare their results with experimentalists in order to achieve engineering goals.
Following four years of college textbook problem sets, tackling real-world problems with direct applications was an exciting prospect for Zhang. “At Sandia, I got a fantastic preview of how computational science is used outside of the academic environment,” he said. “You learn that things don't always go the way you planned. Stuff breaks sometimes, and you have to make decisions to the best of your ability using your education and experience to move forward.”