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Graduate Education in Scientific Computing at Uppsala University

The scientific computing (SC) graduate education program is the largest in Sweden. Currently, there are 24 PhD students enrolled in the SC graduate education program. Note that, in Sweden, graduate school means a school for PhD students, so the PhD students already have a Swedish Master's degree when they are accepted for another 4 years of PhD studies. Many graduate student are recruited from the branch in Scientific Computing in the Engineering Physics program, but a significant number are also recruited from other programs in Sweden. The SC graduate students take about 12 graduate courses before graduating. A set of core graduate courses are given on a regular basis:

• Classical Papers in Numerical Analysis
• Finite Element Methods
• Initial Boundary Value Problems for PDE, I
• Initial Boundary Value Problems for PDE, II
• Load Balancing Methods for Parallel PDE Solvers
• Numerical Methods for Nonlinear Hyperbolic PDE
• Numerical Methods for ODE
• Numerical Methods for PDE
• Numerical Linear Algebra
• Numerical Optimization
• Parallel Algorithms for Numerical Linear Algebra
• Research Methods in Scientific Computing
• Advanced Parallel Computer Architectures and Applications

These courses are then complemented by a set of other courses on advanced numerical methods where the contents is continously changed. For example, during the last academic year courses on Discontinous Galerkin Methods and Absorbing Boundary Conditions were given.

Uppsala University hosts the Swedish National Graduate School in Mathematics and Computing. The majority of the graduate students are recruited from the Engineering Physics/Scientific Computing program, but there are also other recruitment sources. Some of the PhD students participate in the Swedish graduate school in Mathematics and Computing (FMB), which has direct funding from the national government and is hosted by UU.

The Swedish National Graduate School in Scientific Computing is coordinated from the Division of SC. The Swedish National Graduate School in Scientific Computing (NGSSC) is coordinated by one of the faculty members at the division. NGSSC has enrolled 85 PhD students which are distributed all over Sweden, but get together two to three times per year for taking common courses that are mandatory. The NGSSC graduate student projects are interdisciplinary, but with the main thrust in a certain field. As an example, a student may be involved in a Physics project where computational techniques are the main tools. The NGSSC students gets an education in core areas of Scientific Computing which they would not get through a regular Physics program. Another example can be a student in Numerical Analysis working on a problem from an applied area like Chemistry or Fluid Dynamics, who in this way gets a better understanding of the application field.