Director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin

“Enabling Predictive Digital Twins at Scale“

Monday 13 February, 3.30pm – 4.20pm

Abstract

Digital twins represent the next frontier in the impact of computational science on grand challenges across science, technology and society. A digital twin is a computational model or set of coupled models that evolves over time to persistently represent the structure, behavior, and context of a unique physical system, process or biological entity. Digital twins have the potential to enable safer and more efficient engineering systems, a greater understanding of the natural world around us, and better medical outcomes for all of us as individuals. This talk will highlight progress and opportunities in achieving robust, reliable digital twins at scale, including the important role of reduced-order modeling, scientific machine learning and uncertainty quantification.

Bio

Karen E. Willcox is Director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. At UT, she holds the W. A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Chair in Simulation-Based Engineering and Sciences and the Peter O’Donnell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Computing Systems. Before joining the Oden Institute in 2018, she spent 17 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as the founding Co-Director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering and the Associate Head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, she worked at Boeing Phantom Works with the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft design group. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and in 2017 was appointed Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to aerospace engineering and education. In 2022 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

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