Undergraduate Colloquium




Abstract
 

The use of mathematical models in various fields such as engineering applications, financial instruments and contracts, risk and decision making, insurance, optimization and others has seen a massive proliferation since the advancement of numerical methods and distributed computing power. Accurately modeling a highly complex and nonlinear process or event is a difficult task that requires good judgment in keeping a healthy balance between simplifications and approximations needed to solve the model and capturing the essential response/behavior of the said process or event. The practitioner of mathematical modeling is constantly faced with this task of choosing which aspects of the process are most important and which can be neglected in order to arrive at a solution that best describes the problem to be solved and to interpret and validate the model results.

This talk will provide some examples of practical engineering problems encountered when designing oil and gas subsea equipment in which mathematical modeling was extensively applied to verify and validate the operational limits of the subsea equipment. Examples of mathematical models from other science fields such as biomedical engineering, finance, and gaming theory will also be briefly presented. Work opportunities in the industry/academia will be discussed and a list of suggested readings that touch on the subject of mathematical modeling will be provided.


Biographical note: Mircea Ionescu has been living in Houston for almost 20 years and attended the University of Houston first as a computer science student and then switching to mechanical engineering. He received the degrees of Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 2006. During his junior year he became interested in computational fluid dynamics related to blood flow in arteries which led him to pursue a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering under the guidance of Prof. Ralph Metcalfe (also at the University of Houston). After graduating in 2012, he joined OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company, where he is performing solid mechanics simulations of subsea equipment using finite element methods.

Snacks will be served.

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