Center Management Plan and Personnel

 

The Center for Computational Mechanics will be a unit within the School of Computational Science and Information Technology (CSIT). CSIT will provide physical space, administrative, and other support.

The administrative units of the center consist of an External Advisory Committee, a rotating center Director and center faculty members.

The goals and research directions of the Center will be reviewed annually by an External Advisory Committee consisting of the following members.

• Dr. Joe Travis, Director of CSIT, ex-officio Chair of the Committee
• Dr. Marvin Goldstein, Chief Scientist of NASA Glenn Research Center
• Dr. Narayan Radha, Director of the Computational Sciences Directorate, U.S. Army
• Dr. George Karniadakis , Professor of Applied Mathematics, Brown University
• Dr. Joseph Thompson, Professor, Mississippi State University

Management of the center will be the responsibility of the three lead faculty:

• Dr. Namas Chandra, Professor of Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Chris Tam, Professor of Mathematics
• Dr. Leon van Dommelen, Professor of Mechanical Engineering

One of the three will be director, on a yearly rotating basis, with the other two acting as co-directors. Chandra will be the director for the first year.

There will be three Faculty Associates in the center during the first year (the number of faculty associates is expected to increase with time). They are:

• Dr. Qi Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics
• Dr. Lev Gelb, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
• A new Assistant Professor presently being recruited (starting Fall 2002) under a CSIT faculty line. A second Assistant Professor will be recruited to start Fall 2003, again under a CSIT faculty line.

In addition, the Center will support 2 Postdoctoral Research Associates, while CSIT has agreed to provide a third Postdoctoral Research Associate. It is anticipated that there will be at least seven graduate students affiliated with the Center (5 supported by the Center and 2 by CSIT).

The center will establish a visitor's program which will invite outside investigators for stays up to a period of two weeks. Such extended visits are desirable whenever joint research effort is involved. The visitor program will supplement the already ongoing, well attended weekly Scientific Computing Seminars (organized by the principal investigators). In case of the seminar series, visitors typically are on campus for just one to two days.