By Jana de Wiljes
Sebastian Reich (right) presents Erwan Faou (left) with the 2015 Germund Dahlquist Prize. Photo © K. Fritze.
Erwan Faou of the INRIA Rennes - Bretagne Atlantique research centre received this year’s SIAM Germund Dahlquist Prize at the SciCADE 2015 conference held in Potsdam, Germany, in September. The prize committee recognized Faou in particular for "his excellent research contributions to the longtime analysis of stochastic differential equations, to multiscale expansions, and to molecular simulations. Particularly striking is his work on geometrical numerical methods for Hamiltonian partial differential equations where, like Dahlquist, he relates stability to local accuracy. Faou’s work is characterized by a deep insight in both the mathematical and the physical aspects of the problem under investigation."
Faou received his PhD in mathematics in 2000 from University of Rennes 1 in France, under the supervision of Monique Dauge, and his Habilitation from the University of Rennes in 2007. He has been a senior researcher (first class) at INRIA since 2009 and was awarded the Blaise Pascal prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Sebastian Reich, chair of the SciCADE scientific committee and recipient of the Dahlquist Prize in 2003, presented the certificate to Faou. Faou’s plenary talk, titled "Geometric Numerical Integration of Nonlinear Transport Equations," reviewed recent results concerning the numerical integration of equations appearing in fluid dynamics or plasma physics, their design, and longtime behavior, building upon recent results on Landau damping. The Dahlquist Prize lecture was embedded into seven further plenary talks and a rich program of 35 minisymposia and 24 contributed sessions. The conference attracted over 350 researchers from 34 countries who discussed numerical methods for time-dependent phenomena both in the form of forward and inverse problems. During the conference, PhD Student David Hipp received the John Butcher Prize of the New Zealand branch of ANZIAM (Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics) in recognition of his excellent conference presentation. Lukas Einkemmer received the SciCADE New Talent Award for his outstanding publications on splitting methods.
SciCADE 2015 was organized by the Numerical Analysis group at the University of Potsdam. Previous SciCADE meetings were held in Toronto (2011) and Valladolid (2013); the next is scheduled for September 2017 in Bath, England.
Jana de Wiljes is a postdoctoral researcher at Universität Potsdam. She was chair of the local organization committee of SciCADE 2015.