Olaf Schenk elected in the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

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Institutional Communication Service

13 April 2020

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics has elected Professor Olaf Schenk as a SIAM Fellow in the class of 2020 for his contributions to applied mathematics and extreme-scale High-performance computing (HPC). The SIAM Fellows Class of 2020 includes 28 noteworthy professionals who have made significant contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science.

The aim of this academic association is to promote science and industrial progress through mathematics. Prof. Schenk, professor at USI (Institute of Computational Sciences, ICS, Faculty of Informatics) is an internationally recognized expert of high-performance algorithms for scientific computing. His research concerns algorithmic and architectural problems in the field of computational mathematics, scientific computing, and HPC with a strong emphasis on applications in computational science and data analytics.

At the ICS he is responsible for the Advances computing laboratory research group, where the concept of "interdisciplinary cooperation" is very important: in fact, it tries to connect the various branches of computer science and information technology with areas of application ranging from applied mathematics to engineering and natural sciences. The swift uptake of his mathematical software frameworks by the community is rooted in the computational efficiency of the approach and catalysed by the growing demand in the big data era. "As an example of a recent research project, we initiated a connection to data analytics in disease modelling by providing mathematical software tools also used for model-based predictions of malaria risk. Another example is a research collaboration support by SNF SINERGIA at the intersection of economics, climate science, and computational science. An essential aspect of the research project is to develop  computational tools that can help us to understand how researchers and society can tackle the significant economic uncertainties associated with climate change", explains Prof. Schenk.

In addition to research, Olaf Schenk gives courses related to computing at USI and at ETH Zurich, teaching students about the practical software aspects of computing and simulation sciences as well. "Software and Computing are essential parts of my life as a scientist, I can give students a sense of what the research world is like in computational science and engineering", says Schenk. 

 

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