Finding your Passion – Profile Graham Pash

At a young age, Graham Pash became fascinated with the workings of locomotives, which led to his interests in engineering and its related applications. Through his high school and undergraduate experiences, those interests have flourished. Graham is in his fifth year in the  Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (CSEM) Ph.D. program, where he is a member of the Willcox Research Group and the Center for Scientific Machine Learning. Graham’s research focuses on mathematical applications to engineering, with specific interests in uncertainty quantification, digital twins, and precision oncology.

During high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Graham quickly developed a passion for mathematics after participating in a mathematical contest in modeling. That interest continued to flourish throughout his undergraduate years at North Carolina State University, where he explored mathematical research under Professor Ralph Smith, who was also his undergraduate research advisor.  

Graham graduated with a Bachelor of Sciences in Applied Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering, and at the encouragement of Smith, Graham applied and was accepted to the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences CSEM graduate program at The University of Texas at Austin.

“Ralph encouraged me to enter into interdisciplinary work, and he taught me that you don’t have to view yourself strictly as a mathematician or an engineer,” Graham said, “For a long time he really pushed me towards the work done at the Oden Institute.”

Graham, who is advised by Oden Institute Director Karen Willcox, is actively involved in Willcox’s recent collaborations with Tom Yankeelov, lead of the Center for Computational Oncology at the Oden Institute and a professor of biomedical engineering. When discussing his research, Graham said he is excited about improving the speed of the computation model to increase clinical relevance, and determining the data needed by the models given the constraints of medical imaging costs. 

Graham was recently awarded the 2025 Bavarian Graduate School of Computational Engineering (BGCE) Student Paper Prize at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Conference on Computational Science and Engineering in March 2025. His paper, titled, “Bayesian Inference for Patient-Specific Mechanical Models of Tumor Growth,” explores equipping predictive models with quantitative uncertainties, critical for establishing trust in computational models and enabling robust decision making for personalized medicine.

In particular, mechanistic modeling of high-grade gliomas proves challenging due to intra-tumoral heterogeneity at the cellular, molecular, and dynamic scales. His co-authors were Umberto Villa, research associate professor at the Oden Institute, David Hormuth, research scientist at the Center for Computational Oncology at the Oden Institute, Tom Yankeelov, and Karen Willcox.

“We present a methodology that utilizes non-invasive quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to calibrate the spatially varying parameters of a reaction-diffusion partial differential equation (PDE) describing tumor invasion and proliferation,” stated the paper abstract.

“It has been super fortunate to be involved in this collaboration, to see the impact they are making, and to contribute in my own way,” Graham shares. “It has been really awesome to learn more about the application domain, which I didn’t expect to learn when I first came to graduate school.”

Graham currently serves as an officer with the SIAM’s Student Chapter at UT. In his role, Graham helped to fund four teams of undergraduate students to compete in the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications mathematical contest in modeling. “I hope that participating in those competitions helps open interested undergraduates' eyes to how powerful mathematical modeling of the world can be and encourages them to consider a career in the computational sciences,” he added. 

“These competitions are very special to me, since my high school math teacher Dr. Dan Teague encouraged me to participate in them. They showed me the creativity involved in mathematical modeling of the world and ultimately drove me towards a major in applied math,” said Graham.

Outside of academia, Graham is an avid sports enthusiast and music fan. He plays in two Austin-area soccer leagues and competes nearly every weekend. In addition, he also enjoys running and recently participated in the Austin marathon. 

“In the soccer co-ed league, we started out at the bottom of the pyramid, and now we are in division three. For the men’s league, we are in division one, so we joke that Austin FC (the professional soccer club) isn’t too far off,” Graham laughed.

Set to graduate in May 2026, Graham hopes to continue his research through postdoctoral opportunities. He is excited to stay involved in interdisciplinary work and explore new ways to make an impact.

Graham enjoys the weekly seminars held at the Oden Institute which provide opportunities to learn about other researchers' work. With a year left in his program, he has appreciated the unique, interdisciplinary, and supportive community and being in an environment which fosters casual collaboration among researchers across departments and serves as a hub for student activities.