Computational mathematician honoured

Siddhartha Mishra is the winner of the 2019 ICIAM Collatz Prize which is one of the most prestigious prizes awarded in applied mathematics.

Siddhartha Mishra is devoted to combining rigorous mathematics with efficient computations. (Photograph: Florian Bachmann)
Siddhartha Mishra is devoted to combining rigorous mathematics with efficient computations. (Photograph: Florian Bachmann)

Siddhartha Mishra is Full Professor of Applied Mathematics at ETH Zurich and an internationally recognized expert in the design of efficient numerical algorithms for solving non-linear partial differential equations (see ETH News). He researches and teaches at the interface of mathematics, computing, high-performance computing and applications in physics and engineering. “I consider myself a mathematician who is interested in solving problems that arise in the real world,” explains Siddhartha Mishra.

As the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (external pageICIAM) announced earlier today, it has decided to award the ICIAM Collatz Prize to Siddhartha Mishra at its forthcoming cCongress in 2019. The prize committee acknowledges Siddhartha Mishra to be an ingenious designer of excellent numerical methods. “Siddhartha Mishra is devoted to combining rigorous mathematics with efficient computations that are based on a deep theoretical knowledge and insight into real- world problems," says the prize committee.

Numerous applications

“He has produced codes for complicated realistic problems with realistic data; for example, tsunamis generated by rock slides and waves in the solar atmosphere. He uses numerical experiments to gain insight into the analysis of partial differential equations,” the committee added. In fact, some of his codes have already been used in climate models. Aside from tsunamis, other fields of applications for his work include avalanches (see ETH News), aerodynamics, astrophysics and plasma physics.

His results have proved to be useful within the oil industry as well as in electrical engineering, for example for the power engineering industry in Switzerland. In particular Mishra demonstrated, together with colleagues, that in fluid dynamics, statistical outputs of numerical algorithms are more stable. This has resulted in the first proof of convergence of numerical methods to entropy measure-valued solutions of the compressible Euler equations in several space dimensions.

“I am really delighted to win the Collatz Prize. It is a great honour and an encouragement to continue doing excellent research and make some real breakthroughs,” says Siddhartha Mishra. The ICIAM Collatz Prize was established to provide international recognition to individual scientists under 42 years of age for outstanding work on industrial and applied mathematics. It is currently funded by the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (GAMM). It will be awarded during the opening ceremony of the external pageICIAM Congress in Valencia (Spain), on 15 July 2019.

In addition, Mishra says, the award also strengthens the status of the Seminar for Applied Mathematics (SAM) within the Department of Mathematics (D-MATH) as a world-leading centre of numerical and computational mathematics.

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