National Science Foundation grant awarded to ICES postdoctoral researcher

[[Jeffrey Haack, a postdoctoral researcher in the ICES Applied Mathematics Group and the ICES Center for Numerical Analysis, has been awarded $168,000 in a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study high performance computing in computational kinetic theory. The grant will support Haack's work with ICES professor Irene Gamba on computing the Boltzmann transport equation, which models the statistical dynamics of rarified, or low particle density, gases and plasmas at the microscopic level. The work has applications in atmospheric entry problems for aircraft and satellites, nano- and micro-scale engineering, shock wave structure, plasma interactions, and fusion modeling. Read more.]] “The Boltzmann transport equation is how dense your gas is relative to what you’re doing,” said Haack. “In outer space there’s not going to be a lot of particles, so it applies there.” The grant will underwrite the high performance computing work at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and help train graduate students from the ICES Applied Mathematics Group and the ICES Center for Numerical Analysis to use these computing techniques. Chenglong Zhang, a Computational Science, Engineering and Math graduate student, will also conduct related research on the convergence properties of the Boltzmann equation under this grant. Haack has been at UT and ICES since August of 2010, after earning a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin Madison.