{"id":161524,"date":"2025-09-16T19:34:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T19:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/161524\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T19:34:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T19:34:11","slug":"a-new-community-for-computational-science-and-engineering-mit-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/161524\/","title":{"rendered":"A new community for computational science and engineering | MIT News"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past decade, MIT has offered doctoral-level study in computational science and engineering (CSE) exclusively through an interdisciplinary program<\/a> designed for students applying computation within a specific science or engineering field.<\/p>\n

As interest grew among students focused primarily on advancing CSE methodology itself, it became clear that a dedicated academic home for this group \u2014 students and faculty deeply invested in the foundations of computational science and engineering \u2014 was needed.<\/p>\n

Now, with a stand-alone CSE PhD program<\/a>, they have not only a space for fostering discovery in the cross-cutting methodological dimensions of computational science and engineering, but also a tight-knit community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis program recognizes the existence of computational science and engineering as a discipline in and of itself, so you don\u2019t have to be doing this work through the lens of mechanical or chemical engineering, but instead in its own right,\u201d says Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou<\/a>, co-director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE).<\/p>\n

Offered by CCSE<\/a> and launched in 2023, the stand-alone program blends both coursework and a thesis, much like other MIT PhD programs, yet its methodological focus sets it apart from other Institute offerings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s unique about this program is that it\u2019s not hosted by one specific department. The stand-alone program is, at its core, about computational science and cross-cutting methodology. We connect this research with people in a lot of different application areas. We have oceanographers, people doing materials science, students with a focus on aeronautics and astronautics, and more,\u201d says outgoing co-director Youssef Marzouk,<\/a> now the associate dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.<\/p>\n

Expanding horizons<\/p>\n

Hadjiconstantinou, the Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Marzouk, the Breene M. Kerr Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, have led the center\u2019s efforts since 2018, and developed the program and curriculum together. The duo was intentional about crafting a program that fosters students\u2019 individual research while also exposing them to all the field has to offer.<\/p>\n

To expand students\u2019 horizons and continue to build a collaborative community, the PhD in CSE program features two popular seminar series<\/a>: weekly community seminars that focus primarily on internal speakers (current graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty), and monthly distinguished seminars in CSE, which are Institute-wide and bring external speakers from various institutions and industry roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething surprising about the program has been the seminars. I thought it would be the same people I see in my classes and labs, but it\u2019s much broader than that,\u201d says Emily Williams, a fourth-year PhD student and a Department of Energy Computational Science graduate fellow. \u201cOne of the most interesting seminars was around simulating fluid flow for biomedical applications. My background is in fluids, so I understand that part, but seeing it applied in a totally different domain than what I work in was eye-opening,\u201d says Williams.<\/p>\n

That seminar, \u201cAstrophysical Fluid Dynamics at Exascale,\u201d presented by James Stone, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study and at Princeton University, represented one of many opportunities for CSE students to engage with practitioners in small groups, gaining academic insight as well as a wider perspective on future career paths.<\/p>\n

Designing for impact<\/p>\n

The interdisciplinary PhD program served as a departure point from which Hadjiconstantinou and Marzouk created a new offering that was uniquely its own.<\/p>\n

For Marzouk, that meant focusing on expanding the stand-alone program to be able to constantly grow and pivot to retain relevancy as technology speeds up, too:\u00a0\u201cIn my view, the vitality of this program is that science and engineering applications nowadays rest on computation in a really foundational way, whether it\u2019s engineering design or scientific discovery. So it\u2019s essential to perform research on the building blocks of this kind of computation. This research also has to be shaped by the way that we apply it\u00a0so that scientists or engineers will actually use it,\u201d Marzouk says.<\/p>\n

The curriculum is structured around six core focus areas, or \u201cways of thinking,\u201d that are fundamental to CSE:<\/p>\n

Discretization and numerical methods for partial differential equations;Optimization methods;Inference, statistical computing, and data-driven modeling;High performance computing, software engineering, and algorithms;Mathematical foundations (e.g., functional analysis, probability); andModeling (i.e., a subject that treats computational modeling in any science or engineering discipline).<\/p>\n

Students select and build their own thesis committee that consists of faculty from across MIT, not just those associated with CCSE. The combination of a curriculum that\u2019s \u201cmodern and applicable to what employers are looking for in industry and academics,” according to Williams, and the ability to build your own group of engaged advisors, allows for a level of specialization that\u2019s hard to find elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcademically, I feel like this program is designed in such a flexible and interdisciplinary way.\u00a0You have a lot of control in terms of which direction you want to go in,\u201d says Rosen Yu, a PhD student. Yu\u2019s research is focused on engineering design optimization, an interest she discovered during her first year of research at MIT with Professor Faez Ahmed. The CSE PhD was about to launch, and it became clear that her research interests skewed more toward computation than the existing mechanical engineering degree; it was a natural fit.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt other schools, you often see just a pure computer science program or an engineering department with hardly any intersection. But this CSE program, I like to say it\u2019s like a glue between these two communities,\u201d says Yu.<\/p>\n

That \u201cglue\u201d is strengthening, with more students matriculating each year, as well as Institute faculty and staff becoming affiliated with CSE. While the thesis topics of students range from WIlliams\u2019 stochastic methods for model reduction of multiscale chaotic systems to scalable and robust GPU-cased optimization for energy systems, the goal of the program remains the same: develop students and research that will make a difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s why MIT is an \u2018Institute of Technology\u2019 and not a \u2018university.\u2019 There\u2019s always this question, no matter what you\u2019re studying: what is it good for? Our students will go on to work in systems biology, simulators of climate models, electrification, hypersonic vehicles, and more, but the whole point is that their research is helping with something,\u201d says Hadjiconstantinou.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past decade, MIT has offered doctoral-level study in computational science and engineering (CSE) exclusively through an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[191,98183,98184,86577,40688,98181,91060,98185,98182,74,40685],"class_list":{"0":"post-161524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-distinguished-seminars-in-cse","10":"tag-emily-williams","11":"tag-faez-ahmed","12":"tag-mit-center-for-computational-science-and-engineering","13":"tag-mit-classes-and-programs","14":"tag-nicolas-hadjiconstantinou","15":"tag-rosen-yu","16":"tag-stand-alone-phd-program-in-cse","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-youssef-marzouk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}