Małgorzata Peszyńska, professor at the Department of Mathematics of the Oregon State University (USA), will give the SFB 1313 Anneliese Niethammer Lecture of the summer semester 2023 on 6 June 2023 on "Modeling and simulation of (thawing) permafrost".
Speaker: Prof. Ph.D. Małgorzata Peszyńska, Oregon State University (USA)
Title: "Modeling and simulation of (thawing) permafrost"
Date: 6 June 2023
Time: 4:00 pm CET
Place: MML, Pfaffenwaldring 61, 70569 Stuttgart, Campus Vaihingen of the University of Stuttgart
Registration: we kindly ask for prior registration via e-mail.: >>> melanie.lipp@iws.uni-stuttgart.de
Abstract
The Arctic is a vast and complex environment which influences planet-scale budgets of water and energy fluxes. Permafrost soils are its essential component, home to a slew of coupled thermal, hydrological, mechanical as well as biosphere processes. Beside their connections to large scale climate, these processes have significant local impact on humans and infrastructure. The main challenges of modeling these coupled processes are the nonlinearity and complexity of the underlying partial differential equations and the sparsity of data which is not easy to collect in the vast Arctic environment. These challenges are exacerbated for coupled systems across the many relevant temporal and spatial scales. In the talk we focus on the thermal and flow models, with an outlook towards coupled mechanical and biosphere phenomena. In particular, we present our recent work on homogenization of thermal and hydro-mechanical processes from pore- to Darcy scale. The talk will be illustrated with simulations of practical scenarios such as the freeze/thaw cycle in the Arctic subject to the changing environmental conditions.
About Małgorzata Peszynska
Malgorzata Peszynska is a computational mathematician with 30 years of experience working on modeling coupled processes in subsurface. She received PhD in 1992 from University of Augsburg, Germany, and held positions at Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw University of Technology, Purdue University, The University of Texas at Austin, and at the National Science Foundation. Since 2003 she has worked at Oregon State University where she is now a Professor of Mathematics. She is a 2020 AAAS Honorary Fellow, 2021 SIAM Geosciences Career award recipient, 2022 COS Champion of Science, 2022-24 Joel Davis Faculty Scholar, and SIAM's 2023 Women's History Month Honoree https://sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/siam-celebrates-womens-history-month. More information about her research, publications, and students can be found at https://www.math.oregonstate.edu/~mpesz/ Her recent work involves modeling of methane hydrate, permafrost, adsorption hysteresis, Richards-Darcy models for vegetation and hypothermia in human body.
Research
Malgo Peszynska's research interests are in applied mathematics and computational modeling of real life phenomena. Originally trained in pure mathematics, she came to applied mathematics projects through her interest in parallel and high performance computing. Since her PhD she has worked on models of flow and transport using mathematical and numerical analysis as well as computer simulations to understand these phenomena better across the various time and spatial scales. She is involved in a variety of interdisciplinary projects with academic, national lab, and industry collaborators from hydrology, oceanography, statistics, environmental, petroleum, civil and coastal engineering, physics, and materials science. Her research projects were funded by NSF, DOE-NETL and by DOE; her recent projects include the 2015-2021 NSF-DMS 1522734 "Phase transitions in porous media across multiple scales", and 2019-2023 NSF-DMS 1912938 on "Modeling with Constraints and Phase Transitions in Porous Media". Her recent work involves modeling flow, mass and energy transport, and coupled geomechanics processes in the Arctic as well as under seafloor and terrestrial reservoirs. She also worked on mathematical modeling of microbial competition and biofilm formation in porous media, as well as on semiconductor models across the scales.
About the SFB 1313 Anneliese Niethammer Lecture Series
Anneliese Niethammer was the first female professor of the University of Stuttgart in 1947. The lecture series, dedicated to Anneliese Niethammer, is organised by the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1313 and takes place once a semester. Renowned international female researchers speak on relevant topics of current research in the research area of porous media.
