Development and implementation of robust and scalable numerical algorithms

U.S. Air Force awards Chancellor Professor Sigal Gottlieb $600,000 grant for computing cluster

UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Professor Sigal Gottlieb (Mathematics) received a $600,000 grant from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop and implement robust and scalable numerical algorithms.

The grant will fund the acquisition of a new multi-architecture hardware computing cluster to be used as a shared campus research instrument for an inter- and multi-disciplinary group of mathematicians, computational scientists, engineers, and their respective research groups. This will enable the development of robust and scalable numerical algorithms for scientific simulation and data science, empowering eight research projects.

She was named a fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2019 and a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 2021. She has been on the Research, Scholarship, and Innovation committee since its inception and has been chair since 2019.

"The Air Force is looking for algorithms that do a good job getting results. If you want a computer to solve a problem for you, you must tell it how to do so. Ideally you do so in a way that gives you a solution efficiently. This grant will allow us to develop novel and efficient algorithms, mathematical methods for model complexity reduction, data analytics approaches such as machine learning, and so much more."

Over the last four years, Gottlieb has been the principal investigator for $1.2 million in equipment grants brought to UMass Dartmouth's campus. Since starting at UMassD, she's been awarded nearly $5 million in federal research and equipment grants.

If you want a computer to solve a problem for you, you must tell it how to do so. Ideally you do so in a way that gives you a solution efficiently. This grant will allow us to develop novel and efficient algorithms, mathematical methods for model complexity reduction, data analytics approaches such as machine learning, and so much more."

"This grant is meaningful to me because it gives the Center for Scientific Computing, as well as the entire UMassD campus, a computational resource that we can run codes on, which we otherwise wouldn't have," said Gottlieb. "I also love that it can serve to bring people together to collaborate on these ideas. Building a community through a shared resource means a lot to me."

Sigal Gottlieb Chancellor Professor, Mathematics

Gottlieb has taught and conducted research at UMassD for 22 years, starting as an assistant professor of mathematics in her first faculty position out of Brown University's doctoral program in 1999. Reflecting on two decades on campus, she says she most enjoys the integrated research communities that UMass Dartmouth inspires.

Gottlieb, the founding director of UMass Dartmouth's Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research (CSCVR), has been continuously funded by the AFOSR since 2006.

"I love how research communities at UMass Dartmouth include faculty, graduate, and undergraduate researchers," said Gottlieb. "It's a fully integrated community, and I enjoy that so much. We have fantastic faculty and students at every level. Looking back, I think that's my favorite part about working here."