New Center will Develop the Mathematical and Computational Foundations of Digital Twins for Complex Energy Systems

A collaborative research team led by the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences has been given the green light by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program to establish a major new applied mathematics center for research on digital twin technology.

The Multifaceted Mathematics Integrated Capability Center (MMICC) on Multifaceted Mathematics for Predictive Digital Twins (M2dt) is being led by Omar Ghattas, the Fletcher Stuckey Pratt Chair in Engineering and a professor of Mechanical Engineering,  and Karen Willcox, Director of the Oden Institute and a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. The collaboration also includes experts from MIT, as well as three DOE National Laboratories: Argonne, Brookhaven, and Sandia National Labs. 

Digital twins virtually represent a physical system by learning predictive models of the system from sensor data and enable decision-making to optimize future behavior. Researchers at the Oden Institute have been working on the design of digital twins for everything from spacecraft to hurricanes, from the human heart to breast cancer tumors.

While the work of the M2dt Center will be widely applicable, the 19-strong research team is focusing on two applications to demonstrate the scope and power of digital twins. The first is a materials science driving application involving a digital twin for real-time control of self-assembling thin polymer films for use in next generation semiconductors. The second is a climate science testbed focused on a digital twin for coupled ice shelf-ocean cavity systems.

“Building digital twins for these and many other systems entails numerous first order mathematical and computational challenges, including assimilation of data to reduce uncertainties in complex multiphysics models, construction of reduced order models that capture their salient features and optimal control of these systems under uncertainty,” said Ghattas.

"Beyond the climate and nanomanufacturing applications, our center's research will help advance digital twin technology for a broad spectrum of challenging problems for biomedical, energy, environmental, financial, infrastructure, manufacturing, materials and social systems."

The team was chosen to reflect the complex and interdisciplinary challenges that must be addressed in order to advance this technology. The mathematical and computational challenges underlying digital twins vary across applications.

But they all share commonalities too. The M2dt Center will be addressing challenges common to all such as the tight, dynamic interplay between computational models and physical systems, the rapid time scales needed for decision making and control, the complex data sources that must be assimilated, the coupled nature of target systems and the need for robustness to data and model uncertainties to support high-consequence decisions.

The team from UT Austin also includes Patrick Heimbach from the Jackson School of Geosciences, Max Gunzburger, a senior research scientist at the Oden Institute and Professor Emeritus at Florida State University,  J. Tinsley Oden from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Rachel Ward from the Department of Mathematics in the College of Natural Sciences and George Biros from the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering.  

The new project establishing the Multifaceted Mathematics Integrated Capability Center on the Multifaceted Mathematics of Digital Twins (M2dt) officially launched in September 2022 and will receive $13.5M in funding over five years. This is the third time that the Oden Institute has been awarded a center through the DOE’s MMICC initiative.