Faculty Mentors
Jeff Borggaard is a Professor in the Mathematics Department at VT and member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics. His research area is computational mathematics. In particular, his research focuses on numerical methods for simulation and optimization and control of systems modeled by partial differential equations. He has recently worked on model reduction, sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification.
Mentor Homepage: http://www.math.vt.edu/people/borggajt/
John Burns is the Hatcher Professor of Mathematics at Virginia Tech and the Director of the Center for Optimal Design and Control. He has published over 125 research papers on computational methods for identification, optimization and control of systems governed by partial and functional differential equations. He has directed over twenty Ph.D. students and 10 MS thesis and mentored scores of undergraduate students over the past 30 years. He has served on more than 12 editorial boards and he was the founding Editor of the SIAM Book Series on Advances in Design and Control. Dr. Burns’ primary interests concern the development of rigorous and practical computational algorithms for design and optimization of engineering and biological systems. He has applied his research to a wide variety of areas including fluid dynamics, smart materials, large space structures, nano-devices, aerodynamics and mathematical biology. Each year, several undergraduates complete this research experience and a number of these students continue this work as part of their graduate training. Several of these undergraduate projects have lead to Master’s thesis and refereed journal papers with the undergraduate as co-author. During this semester, Dr. Burns is part of a faculty effort to teach basic ideas in modeling to the undergraduate mathematics majors.
Mentor Homepage: http://www.math.vt.edu/people/burns/
Abdul Jarrah is a senior research scientist at VBI and an affiliate assistant professor of mathematics at VT. He researches mainly in biomathematics, focusing on discrete mathematical methods for modeling biological systems. Dr. Jarrah worked with the SIMU REU program where he co-developed an intensive three-week course in computational algebra and led research project. While at East Tennessee State University as a tenure-track assistant professor of mathematics, Dr. Jarrah was one of the founding members of the Institute for Quantitative Biology (IQB) (see http://www.etsu.edu/igb), which is funded by NSF grants and the main goal is conducting and facilitating interdisciplinary undergraduate research.
Mentor Homepage: http://staff.vbi.vt.edu/ajarrah/
Reinhard Laubenbacher is a Professor at VBI, Professor of Mathematics in the VT Mathematics Department, and a faculty member in the interdepartmental Ph.D. program “Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology (GBCB).” He also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Wake Forest University Department of Cancer Biology. He conducts research in modeling and simulation of biological networks, computational immunology, and bioinformatics tool development. For the last 15 years the PI has been involved in innovative projects in undergraduate research and education.
Mentor Homepage: https://www.vbi.vt.edu/faculty/personal_pages/reinhard_laubenbacher
Henning Mortveit is an assistant professor in the Department of
Mathematics at VT and a senior research associate at VBI. His research interests in
dynamical processes over graphs started when he as at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory. Examples of work range from development of mathematical theory on
equivalence, phase space structure, stability, and neutrality to application
implementations on specialized hardware such as FPGAs. He has also developed an
introductory undergraduate course at VT on the topics of graph dynamical systems.
Mentor Homepage: https://www.vbi.vt.edu/faculty/personal_pages/henning_mortveit
Lizette Zietsman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at
VT and a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics. Her research
area is numerical analysis and mathematical modeling. Current interests involve the
development and analysis of numerical methods for solving control problems where the
dynamics are described by partial differential equations; for example, fundamental fluid
flows. This includes studying the sensitivity of the algebraic Riccati equation that results
when the underlying infinite dimensional problem is discretized, mesh-independence if a
Newton type method is used to solve the Riccati equation, as well as the use of adaptive
methods to compute the optimal feedback gain. Zietsman is currently co-organizer of an
undergraduate seminar on Methods in Mathematical Modeling and is acting as Career
Advisor for undergraduate students in the Mathematics Department. She is currently
advising five undergraduate students, two masters students, and two Ph.D., students
Three of these students are female.
Mentor Homepage: http://www.math.vt.edu/people/lzietsma/
