Suzanne Shontz

Suzanne Shontz received her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Cornell University in 2005. She received her B.A. in mathematics and B.S. in chemistry from the University of Northern Iowa in 1999 and her M.S. degrees in computer science and applied mathematics from Cornell University in 2002. Prior to joining Penn State in August 2006, she was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a Minnesota Supercomputing Institute Research Scholar at the University of Minnesota.
Professor Shontz's research interests lie in the development of algorithms and software to enable the solution of large-scale scientific and engineering applications on high-performance, parallel computers. Her research spans the areas of unstructured meshing, numerical optimization, computational materials science, and computational cardiology. Recent projects have included the development of efficient methods for the geometry optimization and electronic structures problems in computational materials science. Other recent work has involved the development of mesh warping algorithms and a nonlinear solver for problems with moving meshes; these methods have been applied to problems in cardiology and solid mechanics. Additional projects have been in mesh smoothing and the use of approximation models in parallel nonlinear optimization.>br? Professor Shontz received a National Physical Science Consortium Fellowship from 1999-2004 and an Honorable Mention for the Alice T. Schafer Prize for Women in Mathematics in 1999. She served on the Panels and Workshops Committee for the 2006 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing. She also served as a panelist for the 2007 SMART Scholarship Program for the Department of Defense and participated in the 2006 Fields-Mitacs Industrial Problem-Solving Workshop held at the Fields Institute in Canada, as an academic expert. She presented her research in the plenary session of the Twelfth International Meshing Roundtable in 2003 and is a reviewer for the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing.

Research Interests:

Scientific and Parallel Computing, Mesh Generation, Numerical Optimization, Computational Materials Science, Computational Cardiology

Selected Publications:

1. Shontz, S. S. A. Vavasis. A Robust Solution Procedure for Hyperelastic Solids with Large Boundary Deformation. Submitted to the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering.
   
2. Diachin, L., P. Knupp, T. Munson, S. Shontz. September 2006. A Comparison of Two Optimization Methods for Mesh Quality Improvement. Engineering with Computers 22(2):61-74.
   
3. Saad Y., J.R. Chelikowsky, S. Shontz. Numerical Methods for Electronic Structure Calculations of Materials. Submitted to SIAM Review.
   
4. Shontz, S., V.E. Howle, P.D. Hough. Using Approximation Models in Simulation-Based Optimization. Submitted to Optimization and Engineering. (In revision)
   
5. Shontz, S., S.A. Vavasis. An Algorithm Based on Finite Element Weights for Warping Tetrahedral Meshes. Submitted to the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing.