Omar Ghattas Receives Inaugural SIAM Babuška Prize

Omar Ghattas, Principal Faculty at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded the inaugural Ivo & Renata Babuška Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). 

The prize, announced at the biennial SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), held March 3 - 7, 2025, in Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded for Ghattas’ “groundbreaking interdisciplinary contributions to the theory and algorithms of Bayesian inverse problems, and their high-impact application across the geosciences.” 

Modeling complexity, scale, and formal uncertainty quantification—Ghattas’ interdisciplinary work has been game-changing with real-world applications in earthquake modeling, seismic inversion, tsunami early warning, and ice sheet modeling. 

“It is a tremendous honor and thrill to have been selected for this inaugural SIAM prize. I give all the credit to the outstanding students, postdocs, and colleagues I have been fortunate enough to work with. What makes this prize particularly special is that it bears the name of my cherished long-time colleague at the Oden Institute. Ivo Babuška was an intellectual giant in the field of computational science and engineering,” said Ghattas, who is a SIAM Fellow.

Babuška was world-renowned for his work on the mathematical foundations of the finite element method, including the Ladzhenskaya-Babuška-Brezzi condition and Babuška–Lax–Milgram theorem. He championed the need for uncertainty quantification for complex models and pioneered methods for random and stochastic PDEs as well as verification and validation of computer models.

“Ivo was a larger-than-life presence at the Oden Institute. He regularly held court in his office to a steady stream of students, postdocs, colleagues, and visitors, always generous with his time and eager to debate the central question that motivated his work: how can we quantify and increase our confidence in the predictions of complex numerical models? His training as both a civil engineer and a mathematician gave him a special appreciation for the field of computational science and engineering,” said Ghattas.

Ghattas’ own research sits at the interfaces of inverse problems, uncertainty quantification, scalable algorithms, high-performance computing, and scientific applications. He said "by building on recent advances in the theory of infinite dimensional Bayesian inverse problems, developing Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithms that are tailored to the geometry of the posterior and scale to high dimensions, and exploiting new supercomputer architectures, we have been able to address a number of large-scale geoscience inverse problems over the past decade that were previously unattainable.” 

“Inverse problems abound in all areas of science, engineering, medicine, and technology and are among the richest sources of challenging inverse problems. For example, when you check the weather forecast, you've benefited from inverse problems that are solved with continuous streams of observations. When energy and mineral companies search for or manage resources, they employ inverse methods. Earthquake sources are inferred from seismic and geodetic data, as is the structure of the Earth. Uncertain states and parameters of atmospheric, ocean, ice, and land components of climate models are inferred from historical and present-day climate observations and proxy data. And subsurface contaminants are inferred by solving inverse problems.”

Beyond the geosciences, inverse problems directly impact the public—from medical imaging to calibration of models of aerospace and automotive structures, chemical plants, and electronics for design and control purposes. 

Vit Babuška, son of Ivo and Renata, said his parents would be very pleased with the SIAM committee’s choice. “I think my father did not want the prize to be a lifetime achievement award. Prof. Ghattas is still a ‘young man’ so I hope the prize will, in a small way, encourage him to continue advancing the state of the art and developing the next generation of computational mathematicians and engineers who may one day win the prize themselves,” said Vit, an aerospace engineer and Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His sister, Lenka, concurred with the sentiments.

Ghattas holds the Ernest and Virginia Cockrell Chair in Engineering, is a professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, and is the Director of the Center for Optimization, Inversion, Machine Learning, and Uncertainty for Complex Systems (OPTIMUS) at the Oden Institute. 

A two-time winner of the Gordon Bell Prize, Ghattas is also Chief Scientist for Frontera, the world’s leading academic supercomputer housed in the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT. There, he engages with science teams across the nation, ensuring that Frontera’s computational power translates into scientific impact. 

The algorithms developed by Ghattas and his collaborators have been incorporated into the hIPPYlib open-source software library, which is in widespread use in the U.S. and globally. 

"The Oden Institute is extraordinarily proud of Omar's impact as an interdisciplinary researcher who exemplifies the intent of the Ivo & Renata Babuška Prize. Omar's pioneering work in Bayesian inverse problems has advanced theory and algorithms and has had real-world impact across multiple scientific application areas,” said Karen Willcox, Oden Institute Director.

After retiring from the University of Maryland, Babuška spent the final 23 years of his career at UT’s Oden Institute, where he retired in 2018 as Professor Emeritus. He died April 12, 2023, at the age of 97. He was preceded in death by his wife Renata, in 2020.

“In one of his final acts of generosity, he established the Ivo & Renata Babuška Prize. I can think of no more meaningful recognition than to be the inaugural recipient,” said Ghattas.

“Near the end of his life, he was very interested in inspiring students and researchers to continue making significant achievements. To that end, he endowed scholarships and thesis prizes in computational mathematics at institutions that were so important in my parents' lives, including UT Austin, the University of Maryland, and the American Mathematical Society. With the SIAM prize the goal was different: it was to highlight, and have the SIAM community recognize, important and significant research achievements. He very specifically wanted to recognize interdisciplinary achievements in computational mathematics, which was the second love of his life, after my mother,” said Vit.

“My father told us not to chase recognition, just do good work, make contributions, and recognition will follow. I think the prize should be thought of as a way for him and my mother to continue to contribute even though they have passed away.”

Established in 2022 through a generous gift from Ivo and Renata Babuška, the prize is awarded in recognition of high-quality interdisciplinary work that targets any aspect of modeling and numerical solution of a specific engineering or scientific application, including mathematical modeling, numerical analysis, algorithms, and validation.

View the SIAM annoucement here.