K. Chad Sockwell's Home Page

K. Chad Sockwell

FSU Ph.D. Candidate

K. Chad Sockwell

Address:
Florida State University
Department of Scientific Computing
400 Dirac Science Library
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4120
USA
E-mail: kcsockw at sandia dot gov
LinkedIn


I currently hold a Postdoc appointment at Sandia National Laboratories.

I am a Ph.D. graduate, as of 2019, from the Department of Scientific Computing at Florida State University (FSU), and was a SCGSR awardee / intern at Los Alamos National Labortory. My advisers were Dr. Max Gunzburger (Master's and Ph.D.) and Dr. Janet Peterson (Master's).

I have a double Bachelor's degree in Computational Science and Physics at FSU as of December 2015. I also have a Master's in Computational Science at Florida State University under the advisement of Dr. Max Gunzburger and Dr. Janet Peterson.

Research Interests:

Some of my current research interests are Climate Modeling, Ocean Modeling and Simulations, Fluid Mechnics, Reduced Order Modeling, Superconductivity, High Performance Computing, Hamiltonian Structure Preserving Schemes, Dynamical Systems, Finite Element Method, Finite Volume Method, Finite Difference Method, Mimetic Methods, Higher Resolution Schemes, Non-Linear P.D.E’s, Linear Solvers, Krylov Solvers, Preconditioners, Multi-grid methods, Exponential Integrators, Variational Integrators, and Parallel in Time Integrators.

Some of my more general interests are Physical Modeling, Fluid Dynamics, Classical Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory, General Relativity, Mathematical Physics, and Scientific Computing.

Current Research:

I am currently investigating and implementing new techniques and methods to improve the DOE's MPAS-O software, which is a small part of a larger climate modeling effort known as ACME. This includes investigiting Exponential Integrator - Krylov methods to improve the temporal scheme in MPAS. I am also investigating the feasibility and applications of Reduced Order Modeling (ROM) in ocean models. I hope my efforts will help in the effort to greatly improve climate modeling techniques to give us a better understanding of how our climate works.

Master's Research:

For my Master's Degree research I produced numerical simulations of vortex dynamics in superconductors using the Ginzburg-Landau model and the finite element method. I produced simulations of vortex pinning sites in superconductors and investigated their effect on a material's critical current. I am also developing a massively parallel, 3D, multi-physics superconductivity simulation (using Trilinos) that can model superconducting technology applications. The simulation could used to model applications that use superconducting magnets and also include other physics associated with the applications.

Awards:

BGCE prize paper finalist - I recently became a finalist in the Bavarian Graduate School of Computational Engineering Student Paper Prize to be awarded at the SIAM Computational Science & Engineering Conference in Atlanta. A link to an article in my department. A link to my short paper for the competition

Best Poster Award at 2016 DOE ACME All Hands Meeting ( with Dr. Konstantin Pieper, Dr. Zhu Wang, Dr. Lili Ju, Dr. Max Gunzburger, Dr. Thi-Thao-Phuong Hoang ). The award .

DOE SCGSR Awardee - As of September I am a DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program awardee for one year (Jan 2017 - Jan 2018). This award allows me to perform my dissertation research at Los Alamos National Lab for one year under DOE support. A link for details. Research Proposal - Algorithmic Improvements of The Temporal Scheme in The MPAS-O Software for Multi-resolution Climate Modeling.

2018 Summer Student Symposium at LANL, outstanding poster award. Link to image of the award

Curriculum Vitae:

My CV.

Posters:

My poster for Siam CSE 17 on my recent work on the shallow water equation and exponential integrators ( with help from Dr. Konstantin Pieper, Dr. Zhu Wang, Dr. Lili Ju, Dr. Max Gunzburger)

My poster for the Undergraduate Poster Symposium at SIAM CSE15, March 14-18, 2015, Salk Lake City, Utah.

My poster for a general audience at the Presidents Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence Poster Symposium.

My poster for the 2016 Computational Science Expo at Florida State University.

Some Talks I Have Given:

A short talk on Scientific Computing record at FSU's Geoset studio.

The slides for a talk I gave to the Society of Physics Students at FSU.

Slides for the SIAM Graduate Student MiniConferene in Clemson SC.

Theses

My Master's thesis and my slides for my defense.

My undergraduate thesis for Honors in the Major in the Scientific Computing Department at FSU, Spring 2015. Here is the link to the Diginole virtual repository.

My slides used for my Honors in the Major defence. There were also some small videos shown at the end, not included here.

C_C++ code for a G-L vortex dynamics simulation using Trilinos. The code is adapted from F90 code given to me by Dr. Janet Peterson. I have reimplemented it in C++ and integrated Trilinos into it. The code is written in a procedural format since the original was in fortran. The code also contains some small subroutines at the end, written by Dr. John Burkardt.