Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing

Last updated
South west view of the IWR building, located at Heidelberg's New Campus (until March 2016) IWRSuedWestAnsicht.jpg
South west view of the IWR building, located at Heidelberg's New Campus (until March 2016)

The Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (short IWR) is a scientific research institute of the Heidelberg University, Germany. It centralizes scientific activity and promotes research and work in scientific computing. Founded in 1987 by the Heidelberg University and the state of Baden-Württemberg, IWR participates in joint project and cooperations with industry in Germany as well as abroad. As a research institute with about 380 staff, IWR is considered one of the world's largest research centers for scientific computing.

Contents

Objectives

The main objectives of the IWR are the

Within the Zukunftskonzept (institutional strategy) of the 2nd German Universities Excellence Initiative further research and application areas were exploited with a focus on Digital Humanities and Computational archaeology.

Graduate School

Since November 2007 the training and education of Ph.D. students at IWR is supported by the Heidelberg Graduate School of Mathematical and Computational Methods for the Sciences (HGS MathComp). As part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative, HGS MathComp is a supported institution partially established and located at IWR, in order to realize innovative concepts for a structured education of Ph.D. students in interdisciplinary research projects.

Software development

The strong focus of the IWR on applied research leads from prototype implementations to maintained software, which is available as Open Source or Freeware like the

as well as proprietary software like the

History

The initial concept of the IWR was proposed in 1985 and accepted by the University Senate two years later. After securing the necessary finances, the first parallel computer was purchased in 1989. The Graduiertenkolleg "Modellierung und Wissenschaftliches Rechnen in Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften" (Modelling and Scientific Computing in Mathematics and the Sciences) was established in 1992 and evaluated by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 1994 and 1998.

The founding director is Willi Jäger managing the IWR from 1987 until 1998. The managing director from 1999 to 2004 was professor Jürgen Warnatz. From 2005 to 2016 the board of directors consisted of professor Hans Georg Bock as managing director, professor Willi Jäger, and professor Bernd Jähne.

In the first quarter of 2016 all the IWR groups moved to the a new building called Mathematikon [3] (Im Neuenheimer Feld 205), which can easily reached by public transportation and is located at the border of the campus at the Berliner Straße (main road). This enabled an optimal integration with the Faculty for Mathematics and Computer Science, which also moved into the Mathematikon.

Since 2017 the managing director is professor Andreas Dreuw. Michael Winckler is the administrative director of the IWR and the Heidelberg Graduate School of Mathematical and Computational Methods for the Sciences (HGS MathComp). The chairman of the HGS MathComp is professor Peter Bastian together with professor Dieter W. Hermann and professor Hans Georg Bock as deputy chairman.

Related Research Articles

Computational archaeology describes computer-based analytical methods for the study of long-term human behaviour and behavioural evolution. As with other sub-disciplines that have prefixed 'computational' to their name, the term is reserved for methods that could not realistically be performed without the aid of a computer.

Feng Kang was a Chinese mathematician. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980. After his death, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established the Feng Kang Prize in 1994 to reward young Chinese researchers who made outstanding contributions to computational mathematics.

Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a rapidly growing multidisciplinary field that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science which spans many disciplines, but at its core it involves the development of models and simulations to understand natural systems.

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (CIMS) is an independent division of New York University (NYU) under the Faculty of Arts & Science that serves as a center for research and advanced training in computer science and mathematics. It is considered one of the leading and most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research centers in the world. It is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute and also a mathematics professor at New York University from 1936 to 1972.

Multigrid (MG) methods in numerical analysis are algorithms for solving differential equations using a hierarchy of discretizations. They are an example of a class of techniques called multiresolution methods, very useful in problems exhibiting multiple scales of behavior. For example, many basic relaxation methods exhibit different rates of convergence for short- and long-wavelength components, suggesting these different scales be treated differently, as in a Fourier analysis approach to multigrid. MG methods can be used as solvers as well as preconditioners.

Jonathan Richard Shewchuk is a Professor in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Computational mechanics is the discipline concerned with the use of computational methods to study phenomena governed by the principles of mechanics. Before the emergence of computational science as a "third way" besides theoretical and experimental sciences, computational mechanics was widely considered to be a sub-discipline of applied mechanics. It is now considered to be a sub-discipline within computational science.

The Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science is one of twelve faculties at the University of Heidelberg. It comprises the Institute of Mathematics, the Institute of Applied Mathematics, the School of Applied Sciences, and the Institute of Computer Science. The faculty maintains close relationships to the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) and the Mathematics Center Heidelberg (MATCH). The first chair of mathematics was entrusted to the physician Jacob Curio in the year 1547.

Hans Georg Bock Mathematics

Hans Georg Bock is a German university professor for mathematics and scientific computing. He has served as managing director of Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing of Heidelberg University from 2005 to 2017. Before this, he had been vice managing director from 1993 to 2004. Hans Georg Bock is a member of the European Mathematical Society's committee for developing countries (CDC-EMS) and responsible member for the region of Asia therein.

hp-FEM is a general version of the finite element method (FEM), a numerical method for solving partial differential equations based on piecewise-polynomial approximations that employs elements of variable size (h) and polynomial degree (p). The origins of hp-FEM date back to the pioneering work of Ivo Babuška et al. who discovered that the finite element method converges exponentially fast when the mesh is refined using a suitable combination of h-refinements (dividing elements into smaller ones) and p-refinements. The exponential convergence makes the method a very attractive choice compared to most other finite element methods which only converge with an algebraic rate. The exponential convergence of the hp-FEM was not only predicted theoretically but also observed by numerous independent researchers.

Miodrag Petković mathematician, computer scientist, and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Niš in Serbia in the Faculty of Electronic Engineering

Miodrag S. Petković is a mathematician and computer scientist. In 1991 he became a full professor of mathematics at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš in Serbia.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to formal science:

Hans Petter Langtangen was a Norwegian scientist trained in mechanics and scientific computing. Langtangen was the Director of the Centre for Biomedical Computing, a Norwegian Center of Excellence hosted by Simula Research Laboratory. He was a Professor of Scientific Computing at the University of Oslo, and was Editor-in-Chief of SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing 2011–2015.

Aslak Tveito is a Norwegian scientist in the field of numerical analysis and scientific computing. Tveito is the Managing Director of the Simula Research Laboratory, a Norwegian research center owned by the Norwegian Government, and is Professor of Scientific Computing at the University of Oslo.

Vladimir P. Gerdt is a Russian mathematician and a full professor at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) where he is the head of the Group of Algebraic and Quantum Computations. His research interests are concentrated in computer algebra, symbolic and algebraic computations, algebraic and numerical analysis of nonlinear differential equations, polynomial equations, applications to mathematics and physics, and quantum computation with over 210 published articles.

Validated numerics, or rigorous computation, verified computation, reliable computation, numerical verification is numerics including mathematically strict error evaluation, and it is one field of numerical analysis. For computation, interval arithmetic is used, and all results are represented by intervals. Validated numerics were used by Warwick Tucker in order to solve the 14th of Smale's problems, and today it is recognized as a powerful tool for the study of dynamical systems.

Rolf Rannacher German mathematician and a professor of numerical analysis at Heidelberg University

Rolf Rannacher is a German mathematician and a professor of numerical analysis at Heidelberg University.

Joseph E. Oliger was an American computer scientist and professor at Stanford University. Oliger was the co-founder of the Science in Computational and Mathematical Engineering degree program at Stanford, and served as the director of the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science.

References

  1. Bastian, P.; Birken, K.; Johannsen, K.; Lang, S.; Neuß, N.; Rentz-Reichert, H.; Wieners, C. (1997), "UG – a flexible Software toolbox for solving partial differential equations", Computing and Visualization in Science, Springer, 1, pp. 27–40, doi:10.1007/s007910050003
  2. "MUSCOD-II package for numerical solution of optimal control involving differential-algebraic equations problems". AG Simulation and Optimization at IWR.
  3. "Mathematikon Heidelberg GmbH & Co. KG". Mathematikon - Bauteil B.