About Scientific Computing at Uppsala University

At Uppsala University (UU), the field of Scientific Computing (SC) includes

  • numerical analysis,
  • algorithms,
  • programming techniques,
  • numerical experiments applied to model problems,
  • collaborative projects in computational science and engineering involving industry and other departments in academia.

Scientific Computing has strong roots in Uppsala. In the early sixties, Heinz-Otto Kreiss started his work as a rising star in numerical analysis with his research on the numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDEs). He occupied the chair in Numerical Analysis from 1965. Kreiss had very good contacts with a number of applications, and expected the same from his students. Since that time, the chair has been occupied by Björn Engquist, Bertil Gustafsson, and Gunilla Kreiss, who have conducted their work in the same tradition. By the end of 2007, the SC graduate education program had yielded a total of 74 PhDs, many of whom have become leading SC researchers. The list includes names such as: Olof Widlund, Bertil Gustafsson, Bengt Fornberg, and Björn Engquist. Also SC undergraduate education had an early start at UU. A curriculum consisting of three SC courses was initiated in 1962, and in 1984 an SC specialization within the 4.5 year program in Engineering Physics was started. This is equivalent to a Swedish Master of Science in SC with a national student recruitment.

Since the start in the early 1960s, the departmental organization of the SC program has undergone a few changes. In 1999, the Department of Scientific Computing joined forces with four other UU departments (Computer Systems, Computing Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Systems and Control). Since then, the SC activities at UU continue to develop at the Division of Scientific Computing, within the large Department of Information Technology. Today, the Division of SC (DSC) involves about 25 faculty members, which makes it the largest in Sweden. The division comprises a core of faculty and PhD students who are devoted to Scientific Computing, and who have excellent contacts with various application areas within academia and industry.

The DSC hosts the recently formed Uppsala Multidisciplinary Center for Advanced Computational Science (UPPMAX). This center is intended to serve computational research across the whole field of Science and Engineering at UU. The UPPMAX organization comprises: a part-time director, systems engineers and substantial computer resources. Moreover, the center funds five application experts. These are senior researchers who have expertise both in the field of High Performance Computing (HPC), including numerical algorithms and parallel implementations, and in a particular area of application of computational science.

The Division of SC hosts the Swedish Center for Women in Scientific Computing. A relatively large percentage of the researchers and graduate students at the DSC are female, and the division has also formed the Swedish Center for Women in Scientific Computing, which currently has 26 members distributed over different universities in the country.