High Performance Computing and Simulations of Turbulence
Historically, simulations of turbulence has been one of the most demanding areas of study for High Performance Computing. The growth of datasets generated by fluids simulations continues to force scientists to rethink algorithms -- as well as post-processing techniques. Rodolfo Ostilla Monico, assistant professor at the University of Houston in the department of Mechanical Engineering, presented his findings involving modifying the underlying algorithms of codes in order to utilize HPC resources more efficiently.
“This is outside my comfort zone,” said Monico in his lecture. “I often talk about fluid mechanics, but today I thought I would speak more about the High-Performance Computing and Data Science side of my research.” Monico’s lecture taught that turbulence is all around us; it is in the waves that crash against the shore, and the water that comes out of a garden hose. It is present deep in dormant volcanoes and on the surface of the sun. There are various scales of turbulence, and Monico elaborated on the ways that novel Data Science techniques such as Visualization and approaches such as Dynamic Mode Decomposition are aiding discovery in research.
Rodolfo Ostilla Monico has been an assistant professor at the University of Houston in the department of Mechanical Engineering since fall 2017. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Sevilla (Spain) and an MSc in Aerospace Dynamics from Cranfield University (UK). His Ph.D. thesis was obtained at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, under the supervision of Roberto Verzicco and Detlef Lohse. From there, he moved to Harvard University for a postdoc under Michael Brenner. His research focuses on computational fluid mechanics at high Reynolds numbers, from the fundamental to the applied.
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