1.10.2026 IfI Colloquium: High-Performance Scientific Simulations of Chaotic Fluid Systems
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Tülin Kaman
Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA and
Guest Professor at IfI
Date: Thursday, 1 October 2026, 17:15
Location: room BIM 4-033 at the Department of Informatics (IfI), Binzmühlestrasse 11, 8050 Zürich
Details about the format of the talk shall be checked always just ahead of a certain presentation date: (information here)
Abstract
Understanding and predicting the behavior of complex systems in science and engineering applications requires “solving” the computational problem through desired capabilities such as high-resolution simulations, accurate and robust numerical algorithms, efficient algorithm implementation and the development of scalable software frameworks. The first step is mathematical modeling which explains the observed physical phenomena using equations. The second step is computational modeling which is based on the choice of spatial discretization methods and numerical algorithms. Computational scientists and engineers achieve better agreement between numerical simulations and experiments through careful verification, validation and uncertainty quantification studies. Software developers need be aware of the challenges from the effective usage of computational resources to the trade-offs between communication, computation and memory on modern, massively parallel computing systems. In this talk, we focus on the computational aspects of numerical algorithms in particular efficiency and scalability of algorithms on high-performance computing. We discuss the skills needed to design and develop a massively parallel, highly-scalable, accurate and robust software framework and its applications in computational fluid dynamics for the numerical simulations of hydrodynamic instabilities to understand the dynamics of turbulence.
Bio
Tülin Kaman is an affiliated associate professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Arkansas (UofA), Fayetteville, USA, and a guest professor in the Department of Informatics (IFI) at the University of Zurich (UZH). She received her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Stony Brook University in New York (US), winning the Woo Jong Kim Dissertation Award in 2012. She was a Paul Scherrer Institute Fellow, a postdoctoral researcher, and a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, and the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Zurich. She joined the IFI as an academic guest during her 2024-2025 Collegium Helveticum Senior Fellowship at the Swiss Institute for Advanced Study at ETH Zurich and received the 2025-2026 Verena Meyer Visiting Professorship, supported by the Faculty of Business, Economics, and Informatics at UZH. As the Lawrence Jesser Toll Jr. Endowed Chair at UofA, she established the Computational and Applied Mathematics Group and served as a faculty advisor for the UofA Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and UofA Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Student Chapters. In Fall 2025 semester, with her students she established the Women in Informatics Network Zurich (WINZ) and the University of Zurich Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter to support undergraduate and graduate students in their education and careers across all computing fields.