People

Barbagroup in the lab, visited by alumnus Christopher Cooper. From left: Tingyu Wang, Pi-Yueh Chuang, Natalia Clementi, Olivier Mesnard, Christoper Cooper (with daughter Amaya), and Lorena Barba (October 2017).
Principal Investigator
Lorena A. Barba, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, the George Washington University, Washington, DC.
PhD Aeronautics, California Institute of Technology.
BSc Mech. Eng., Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile.
Member of the Board of Directors for NumFOCUS. Member of the editorial board for IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering, The Journal of Open Source Software, The Journal of Open Source Education, and The ReScience Journal.
LinkedIn profile // Twitter // Google Scholar // ImpactStory
Personal Biography — includes bio for speaking engagements. See also About.me profile.
PhD students at GW
- Paulina Rodriguez, M.S. Mathematics (2012), Claremont Graduate University; B.A. Mathematics (2010) University of California Santa Cruz – DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellow
- Anastasia Sarmakeeva, Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (specialist program, 2009–2014), Udmurt State University, Izhevsk, Russia. Ernst Mach grantee (2018–2019); Fullbright Scholar 2019–2020.

Fernando Perez visits the lab! From left: Gil Forsyth, Tingyu Wang, Olivier Mesnard, Fernando Perez, Natalia Clementi (August 2015).
Collaborators
(Alphabetical, past and present. Affiliation at the time of our collaboration.)
- Jaydeep Bardhan, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University
- Timo Betcke, University College London, UK
- Cris Cecka, Research Scientist at the Institute for Applied Computational Science, Harvard University (until Dec. 2014); then at NVIDIA Research.
- Christopher Cooper, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile
- Tsuyoshi Hamada, Nagasaki University Advanced Computing Center (NACC), Japan
- Hans Johnston, Mathematics and Statistics Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
- Matthew G Knepley, Computation Institute, University of Chicago
- Louis F Rossi, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Delaware
- Jake Socha, Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Virginia Tech
- Pavlos P. Vlachos, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University (previously at Virginia Tech)
Past group members
(Inverse chronological order.)
- Tingyu Wang, BSc Beihang University, China (2012); MSc University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (2014). GW PhD (2022). Senior Software Engineer at NVIDIA // LinkedIn profile
- Pi-Yueh Chuang, BS National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan (2008); MS National Taiwan University (2012). GW PhD (2022) // LinkedIn profile
- Olivier Mesnard, MSc (2011) Mech. Eng., Ecole Supérieur de Mécanique SUPMECA, Paris; MSc (2012) Mechanical Engineering, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. GW PhD (2022). Software Engineer at Capital One // LinkedIn profile
- Natalia Clementi, Licenciatura (Physics), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina (2013), GW PhD (2021), then Software Engineer at Coiled // LinkedIn profile
- Gilbert Forsyth, BA Oberlin College (2006), MSc Mechanical Engineering, Boston University (2014), PhD student at GW 2014–2017, then Senior Software Engineer at Capital One // LinkedIn profile
- Christopher D. Cooper, graduate student at BU —PhD (2015), MSc (2012) Mechanical Engineering, Boston University. BSc, PEng (2009) Mechanical Engineering, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile. After graduating, he became a faculty member at the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María // LinkedIn profile
- Anush Krishnan, graduate student at BU —PhD (2015), BTech & MTech (2009) Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. After his PhD, he became a Senior Software Engineer at Exa Corp. He joined the startup nuTonomy as as software engineer in May 2017 // LinkedIn profile
- J. Brent Parham, graduate student at BU —MSc (Dec. 2013) in Mechanical Engineering, Boston University. BSc (2010) Aerospace Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brent was a Lincoln Scholar at BU, and in January 2014 returned to his position as a staff scientist at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory // LinkedIn profile
- Simon K. Layton, graduate student at BU —PhD (Sept. 2013) and MSc (2011) in Mechanical Engineering, Boston University. BSc (2008) Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK. Research intern at Nvidia, Summers 2011/2012. In September 2013, Simon became a DevTech Engineer at Nvidia, Inc., Santa Clara, CA // LinkedIn profile
- Rio Yokota, postdoc (Feb. 2009–Sep. 2011) —PhD (2009) Mechanical Engineering, Keio University, Japan. In Sept. 2011, Rio became a Research Scientist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KAUST, working with Prof. David Keyes. In April 2015, he joined the faculty at Tokyo Institute of Technology // LinkedIn profile
- Alejandro Pelaez, undergraduate researcher, UROP awardee Summer 2011, Boston University. After graduating, he became a software engineer at Kayak // LinkedIn profile
- Felipe A Cruz, graduate student at University of Bristol —PhD (July 2011), University of Bristol, UK. MSc (2007) Ingeniería Informática (Computer Science), Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile. Postdoc at Nagasaki Advanced Computing Center with Prof. Tsuyoshi Hamada, until July 2013. Lead researcher in Square Enix (the Japanese video game company). Since 2016, Computational Scientist at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (see the Staff page) // LinkedIn profile
- Claudio Torres, visiting student at University of Bristol under the SCAT (Scientific Computing Advanced Training) Project; went on to a PhD with our collaborator Prof. Louis Rossi; now faculty at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile // LinkedIn profile
- Helmut Wahanik, visiting student at University of Bristol under the SCAT (Scientific Computing Advanced Training) Project; went on to a PhD with Dan Marchesin at IMPA, Brazil, and now works as applied mathematician for a software company in Toronto // LinkedIn profile