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Oden Institute Honors 2024 Graduates at Reception

By Joanne Foote

Published May 24, 2024

Graduates with their advisors (not all pictured).

The Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin welcomed graduating students to a reception on May 11 following the Graduate School Convocation ceremony. Students earning graduate level degrees in Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics gathered with faculty, advisors, and their families in the Peter O’Donnell Building to celebrate their achievements. 

Oden Institute Core Faculty member George Biros led the faculty in recognizing the students who were in attendance on the busy commencement day. "It is with pride and admiration that we acknowledged our students for their perseverance, pursuit of scholarly excellence, and their collegiality throughout their journey here.”

Biros, who is the CSEM Graduate Advisor and a professor of mechanical engineering, said the Oden Institute has been privileged to share in the CSEM graduates’ academic and personal growth. “Indeed, it is through their hard work, their passion for learning and discovery that Oden has flourished and evolved into the institute it is today.” He acknowledged the support of the parents and families “who have stood by our graduates, offering their unwavering encouragement, and understanding, we express our deepest appreciation to them, as well.” 

Biros was joined by several other faculty including Oden Institute Director Karen WillcoxTodd Arbogast (chair of the CSEM Graduate Studies Committee), Irene GambaPhilip Morrison, and Tom Hughes. Each offered congratulations for their respective students as they prepare for the next steps careers in academia, industry, or national research labs.

"Congratulations to all our graduates! We are very proud to call you all Oden Institute alumni and we can't wait to see your future accomplishments," said Willcox. 

The event honored a total of 32 graduates who completed degrees between August 2023 and May 2024. Below is the list of all graduating students.

Indeed, it is through their hard work, their passion for learning and discovery that Oden has flourished and evolved into the institute it is today.

— George Biros, professor and graduate advisor

CSEM PhD Graduates

  Jacob Badger - Advisor: Leszek Demkowicz (May 2024)
  Dissertation: Scalable DPG Mulitgrid Solver with Applications in High-Frequency Wave Propagation

  William Barham - Advisor: Philip Morrison (May 2024)
  Dissertation: On Hamiltonian Structure Preserving Discretizations of Plasma and Nonlinear Wave Models

  Carlos del-Castillo-Negrete - Advisors: Clint Dawson & Troy Butler (Dec 2023) 
 Dissertation: Sequential Data Consistent Inversion for Parameter Estimation in Coastal Storm Surge Models using High Performance    Computing Applications

  Yijun Dong - Advisors: Per-Gunnar Martinsson & Rachel Ward (Aug 2023)
  Dissertation: Randomized Dimension Reduction with Statistical Guarantees

  Benjamin Feuge-Miller - Advisor: Moriba Jah (Aug 2023)
  Dissertation: A-Contrario Space Surveillance: Multiple Hypothesis Testing for Object Detection and Tracking in Telescope Imagery

  Kun Huang* - Advisor: Irene Gamba (Dec 2023)
  Dissertation: A Numerical and Analytical Study of Kinetic Models for Particle-Wave Interaction in Plasmas
  *Recipient of the 2024 Oden Institute Outstanding Dissertation Award

  Michael Johnson - Advisor: Tom Hughes (May 2024)
  Dissertation: Noninvasive Assessment of Coronary Artery Plaque Vulnerability Using Computational Solid Mechanics

  Jiyoung Lee - Advisor: Graeme Henkelman (May 2024)
  Dissertation: Machine Learning-aided Chemical Kinetic Modeling

  Jiaqi Li - Advisor: Leszek Demkowicz (May 2024)
  Dissertation: A Nonlinear Mixed Problem Framework for Discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin (DPG) Methods

  Shane McQuarrie - Advisor: Karen Willcox (Aug 2023)
  Dissertation: Data-Driven Parametric Reduced-Order Models: Operator Inference for Reactive Flow Applications

  Matthew Smith - Advisor: Edward Marcotte (Aug 2023)
  Dissertation: Computational Modeling of Protein Flurosequencing

  Anna Yesypenko - Advisors: Per Gunnar Martinsson & George Biros (Dec 2023)
  Dissertation: Randomized Algorithms for the Efficient Solution of Elliptic PDEs on Modern Architectures

MS CSEM Graduates (continuing to CSEM PhD):

  Shukai Cai - Advisor: Clint Dawson (Dec 2023)
  Blake Christierson - Advisor: Omar Ghattas (May 2024)
  Sebastian Henao-Garcia - Advisor: Karen Willcox (May 2024)
  Joseph Kump - Advisor: Patrick Heimbach (Dec 2023)
  Jiyoung Lee - Advisor: Graeme Henkelman (Aug 2023)
  Eugene Park - Advisor: Feliciano Giustino (Dec 2023)  
  Tiffany Phan Advisor: Moriba Jah (Dec 2023)
  Keith Poletti - Advisors: Rachel Ward & Stella Offner (Dec 2023)
  Shoshi Reich - Advisor: Patrick Heimbach (Dec 2023)
  Vignesh Sella - Advisor: Karen Willcox (May 2024)
  Rylan Spence - Advisor: Clint Dawson (Dec 2023)
  Xin Tang - Advisor: Michael Baldea (Dec 2023) 
  Kenton Wu - Advisor: Clint Dawson (May 2024)
  Jonathan Zhang - Advisor: Leszek Demkowicz (Aug 2023)
  Yifan Zhang - Advisor: Joe Kileel (Dec 2023)
  Qing Zhu - Advisor: Chandrajit Bajaj (May 2024)

 

MS CSEM Graduates (terminal):

  Yuchen Feng
 - No Thesis/No Report (May 2024)
 
  Mohamed Habeebulla Khazi
 - Advisor: Loukas Kallivokas (May 2024)
  Thesis:Topology Optimization of Metamaterials for Wave Control

  Chahak Mehta - Advisors: Krishna Kumar & Clint Dawson (Aug 2023)
  Report: Accelerating Advances in Natural Hazard Engineering using Knowledge Graphs and Differentiable Simulations

  Sean Zanyk McLean - No Thesis/No Report (Dec 2023)

 

5-year Integrated BS Computer Science/MS CSEM

  Rohan Potru - Advisor:  Chandrajit Bajaj (May 2024)
  Report: An Analysis of “Network Topology Optimization via Deep Reinforcement Learning” by Li et al., 2023.