Oden Institute Celebrates 2022-2023 Graduates

The Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin welcomed graduating CSEM students to a reception on May 6 following university-wide commencement ceremonies. Along with family members, Master’s and PhD graduates gathered with faculty and advisors in the Peter O’Donnell Building to celebrate their achievements. 

While not all were available to attend, the event honored a total of 30 graduates, including 11 Ph.D students, 12 Master’s continuing to Ph.D, 6 Master’s, and one 5-year integrated BS/MS CSEM (Computational Science, Engineeering and Mathematics) program, all who completed their degrees between August 2022 and May 2023. Oden Institute Director, Karen Willcox, led the faculty in recognizing the students.

"Congratulations to all of our students," she said. "Collectively, you represent an incredible set of accomplishments spanning computing, applied mathematics, statistics, machine learning, engineering, science, geoscience, and medicine. You are the reason we are all here and you make the Oden Institute the very special place it is."

Willcox was joined by several other faculty including J. Tinsley Oden, Robert Moser, Todd Arbogast, Katherine Brown, Clint Dawson, Omar Ghattas, Patrick Heimbach and Thomas Hughes. Each offered congratulations and parting words of encouragement for their respective students as they prepare for the next steps careers in academia, industry or national research labs.

"The Institute is very proud of everything you have accomplished, and we can't wait to see the incredible impact you will have on the world in the coming years," added Willcox. 

Below is the list of all graduating students along with their faculty advisors and thesis title.

PhDs – May 2023:

Mark Loveland – Advisor: Clint Dawson
Dissertation: WAVEx: A New spectral Wind Wave Model Using Stabilized Finite Elements

Prakash Mohan – Advisor: Robert Moser
Dissertation: Investigating and Modeling Turbulence Using Numerical Simulations

Jonathan Wittmer – Advisor: Tan Bui
Dissertation: Accelerating Inverse Solutions with Machine Learning and Randomization
 

PhDs – December 2022:

Lianghao Cao* – Advisors: J. Tinsley Oden and Omar Ghattas
*Winner of the 2023 Oden Institute Outstanding Dissertation Award
Dissertation: Predictive Modeling and Uncertainty Quantification for Diblock Copolymer Self-Assembly

Jonathan Kelley – Advisor: Ali Yilmaz
Dissertation: Reliable Hierarchical Matrix Compression Methods and Their Efficient Parallelization for Integral-Equation Based Rcs Prediction

Kirill Rebrov – Advisor: Gregory Rodin
Dissertation: Coupled Phenomena in Thin Layers
 

PhDs in August 2022:

Hsiao-yu Chen – Advisors: Mary Wheeler and Etienne Vouga
Dissertation: Discrete Representation of Elastic Bodies for Physical Simulation

Sean McBane – Advisors: Karen Willcox and Youngsoo Choi
Dissertation: Topology optimization and Uncertainty Quantifications Using Component-Wise Reduced Order Modeling

Meghana Palukuri – Advisor: Edward Marcotte
Dissertation: Machine Learning Methods for Community Detection in Networks Using Known Community Information

Caleb Phillips – Advisor: Thomas Yankeelov
Dissertation: Development, Calibration, and Prediction of Mathematical Models of Tumor Growth and Angiogenesis

Yuege Xie – Advisor: Rachel Ward
Dissertation: Adaptive and Weighted Optimization for Efficient and Robust Learning

5-year Integrated BS CS/MS CSEM May 2023 Graduate:

Megan Le – Advisors: William Press and Vagheesh Narasimhan
Report: 1,000 Ancient Genomes Uncover 10,000 Years of Natural Selection

Terminal MS CSEM Graduates:

May 2023

Dilip Subbaian Geetha Krishnan – No Thesis or Report

Karan Hiranandani – Advisors: Omar Ghattas and Umberto Villa
Report: hiPPYfire: An Inexact Newton-CG Method for Solving Inverse Problems Governed by PDE

Becky Langdon – Advisors: Katherine Brown and Clint Dawson
Thesis: Triatominae in North America: A Comparison of Statistical Machine Learning Approaches for Habitat Suitability Modelling

Geonyeong Lee – No Thesis or Report
 

December 2022

Xiang Liu – No Thesis or Report
Preston Fussee-Durham – No Thesis or Report
 

The following Master’s CSEM graduates are continuing to a PhD:

May 2023

Ziyu Du – Advisor: George Biros
Matthew Goldberg – Advisor: Patrick Heimbach
 

December 2022

James Almgren-Bell – Advisor: George Biros
William Barham – Advisors: Philip Morrison and Irene Gamba
Yijun Dong – Advisors: Per-Gunnar Martinsson and Rachel Ward
Yiran Shen – Advisor: Bjorn Engquist
Namo Wichitrnithed – Advisor: Clint Dawson
Eboni Williams – Advisor: Graeme Henkelman
Sarah Williamson – Advisor: Patrick Heimbach
Anna Yesypenko – Advisors: Per-Gunnar Martinsson and George Biros
 

August 2022

Benjamin Pachev – Advisor: Clint Dawson
Matthew Scarborough – Advisor: Clint Dawson