College of Engineering - University of Wisconsin-Madison

NEEP Seminar Series: Guanyu Su, University of California, Berkeley
2025-11-20 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Chicago)
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Thursday, November 2012:00 – 1:00pm106 Engineering Research BuildingPlease contact office@neep.wisc.edu for assistance with remote participation.

Efficient Tritium Extractor Design Enabled by High-Fidelity Simulation Tritium is the essential fuel in D-T fusion reactions, which underpin both inertial confinement and magnetic confinement fusion concepts. Given the extremely limited natural supply, in-situ breeding is the only viable pathway to sustain commercial fusion power. Liquid blankets containing ⁶Li, such as molten salts FLiBe and FLiNaK, are particularly promising because they enable both tritium breeding and efficient thermal management. Molten fluoride salts are especially attractive as coolants due to their excellent thermal and neutronic properties, as well as their inherently low tritium solubility. While significant research has been devoted to breeding mechanisms, tritium extraction remains relatively understudied, which creates a critical bottleneck in the D-T fuel cycle.

In this talk, I will present two ongoing efforts to design efficient tritium extractor concepts, i.e., both permeator against vacuum (PAV) and gas-liquid contactor (GLC), using high-fidelity simulations. I will demonstrate that advanced extractor design requires resolving a coupled multidimensional, multiphase transport problem. High-fidelity modeling provides detailed insights into local transport phenomena that are otherwise difficult to probe experimentally. With the added transport physics incorporated into existing CFD tools, we are well-positioned to perform refined parametric studies and optimize extractor geometries to advance tritium management strategies for fusion systems.

Guanyu Su is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering from MIT. At Berkeley, Dr. Su’s research focuses on addressing critical scientific and engineering challenges in nuclear thermal-hydraulics and clean energy systems. His interests span four main areas: (1) heat and mass transfer in high-temperature molten salt technologies, (2) advanced diagnostic tool development for fission and fusion systems, (3) high-temperature thermal storage for advanced energy systems, and (4) applications of machine learning in nuclear reactor simulation, experimentation, and maintenance. He also serves as the faculty lead for the Master of Engineering program in the Nuclear Engineering Department.

MS&E Seminar Series: Professor Zetian Mi, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2025-11-20 13:00 - 14:00
UW-Madison Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes Professor Zetian Mi. His seminar, “The Soft Side of Hard Materials: Ferroelectricity in (Ultra)wide-Bandgap Nitrides”, will take place on Thursday, November 20 from 1-2 p.m. in MSE 265.

Bio

Zetian Mi is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of semiconductor nanotechnology, optoelectronics, and photonics. He is a recipient of the Optica’s Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award (2025), the AVS NSTD Nanotechnology Recognition Award (2025), the ISCS Quantum Devices Award (2024), the Science and Engineering Award from W. M. Keck Foundation (2020), the IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer Award (2021), the IEEE Nanotechnology Council Distinguished Lecturer Award (2020), and the David E. Liddle Research Excellence Award (2021), the Rexford E. Hall Innovation Excellence Award (2024), and the Wise-Najafi Prize for Engineering Excellence in the Miniature World (2025) from the University of Michigan. He is a fellow of IEEE, APS, Optica, and SPIE. He is a co-founder of NS Nanotech Inc. and NX Fuels Inc.

Abstract

Since the first discovery of ferroelectricity by Joseph Valasek in 1920, the field of ferroelectrics has been largely focused on oxide-based materials and devices. Recently, it has been shown that, the incorporation of group IIIB elements, e.g., Sc and Y, can transform conventional III-nitride semiconductors to be ferroelectric, with significantly enhanced electrical, dielectric, piezoelectric, catalytic, and linear and nonlinear optical properties. As such, ferroelectric nitride semiconductors have garnered significant attention for a wide range of applications in high power, high frequency, and high temperature electronics, optoelectronics, ferroelectrics, acoustoelectric, photocatalysis, and quantum photonic devices and systems. In this presentation, I will discuss the underlying physics and mechanisms of significantly enhanced piezoelectric response, ferroelectric switching, domain wall kinetics, and polarization dynamics. Additionally, the obstacles currently faced by nitride ferroelectrics in practical applications will be presented, followed by in-depth discussions of potential solutions, future research directions, and the prospects for further developments in this emerging field.

ME 903 Graduate Seminar: Sherif Mohamed
2025-11-20 16:00 - 17:00 | 3M Auditorium, rm 1106 Mechanical Engineering Building, 1513 University Ave, Madison, 53711
The ME 903: Graduate Student Lecture Series features campus and visiting speakers who present on a variety of research topics in the field of mechanical engineering. Sherif Mohamed (PhD ’03) is the Executive Leader for Decarbonization Technologies at GE.

UW-Madison CEE Alumni Night in Minnesota
2025-11-20 17:00 - 19:00 | Mortenson HQ, 700 Meadow Ln N, Golden Valley, MN, 55422, United States
Badger engineers are gathering and you are invited!

Catch up with local civil, environmental, and geological engineering alumni during our first alumni night in Minnesota.

Register now

Have a colleague or friend who might be interested? Feel free to bring a plus one.

Greg Harrington, chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, will share news and updates at 6:00 pm, and appetizers and refreshments will be provided by Mortenson. There is no cost to attend and free parking is available onsite. Come join us!

Thank you to our event sponsor!

Closing the Loop on Machine Learning: A Perturbation Analysis Approach to Decision-Dependent Distribution Shift
2025-11-21 12:00 - 13:00 | 1163 Mechanical Engineering, 1513 Engineering Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
UW-ISyE looks forward to welcoming Roy Dong Assistant Professor in the Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Roy Dong – research assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering

As data-driven methods are deployed in real-world settings, the processes that generate the observed data will often react to the decisions of the learner. For example, a data source may have some incentive for the algorithm to provide a particular label (e.g. approve a bank loan), and manipulate their features accordingly. In this talk, I will present our recent work on analyzing this decision-dependent distribution shift through the lens of perturbation analysis in control theory. This framework allows us to consider settings with multiple equilibria and characterize the regions of attraction for each equilibrium, which is observed in practice: learning algorithms can settle into echo chambers, and characterizes the set of initial conditions which leads to each ultimate outcome. Additionally, I will discuss how these methods can be computationally calculated using integral quadratic constraints, how they can be made distributionally robust, and how it can be used for trajectory predictions for robotic crowd navigation.

Bio: Roy Dong is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a BS Honors in Computer Engineering and a BS Honors in Economics from Michigan State University in 2010. He received a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017, where he was funded in part by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Berkeley Energy & Climate Institute, a visiting lecturer in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research department at UC Berkeley, and a Research Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research uses tools from control theory, economics, statistics, and optimization to understand the closed-loop effects of machine learning, with applications in cyber-physical systems such as the smart grid, modern transportation networks, and autonomous vehicles.

Mechanics Seminar: Professor Wayne Chen
2025-11-21 12:05 - 12:55 | Engineering Hall, RM 1610, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, 53711
The Mechanics Seminar Series is a weekly seminar given by campus and visiting speakers on topics across the spectrum of mechanics research (solids, fluids, and dynamics). Professor Wayne Chen is a professor at Iowa State University.

ISyE - Coffee and donuts with HFES
2025-11-24 09:00 - 11:00 | 3210 Mechanical Engineering, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, 53706
Before heading off for Thanksgiving, swing by for some coffee & donuts with the students of HFES. All are welcome.

BME Seminar Series: Julien Berro, PhD
2025-11-24 12:00 - 13:00 | 1003 (Tong Auditorium) Engineering Centers Building, 1550 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Fantastic forces and where to find them

Julien Berro, PhDAssociate Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and of Cell BiologySchool of MedicineYale University

Abstract:Mechanical forces are central to countless biological processes in health and disease. However, despite their ubiquity and importance in cellular processes, our understanding of biomechanical forces lags far behind our understanding of the underlying biochemistry. Studying forces within cells is difficult because tools and approaches to directly probe forces at the molecular level are scarce, difficult to use or have limited applications. In this seminar, I will present approaches based on quantitative microscopy, mathematical modeling and molecular force sensor engineering that my lab has developed to readily measure biophysical quantities so far impossible or difficult to measure in vivo. Using clathrin-mediated endocytosis as a model system, I will show how these methods have uncovered new molecular mechanisms of force production, force transmission and force sensing by the actin cytoskeleton.

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BME Seminar Series: Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson
2025-12-01 12:00 - 13:00 | 1003 (Tong Auditorium) Engineering Centers Building, 1550 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
The Sound of Science: Engaging the Public with Big Ideas

Anne Strainchamps and Steve PaulsonCreators and Hosts of “To the Best of Our Knowledge”Wisconsin Public Radio

Abstract:Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson have spent decades fostering curiosity and conversation in a rapidly changing world. Currently, they are collaborating with the “Island of Knowledge” think tank in Tuscany to produce a series of interviews with leading international biologists, physicists and philosophers. Their recent radio shows have covered topics ranging from astrobiology and neuroplasticity to whale communication.

This talk offers a behind-the-scenes look at the art of using dialogue and the power of story to illuminate complex thinking across multiple scientific disciplines. Anne and Steve will discuss some of the methods they use to help scientists and engineers connect their work with broader audiences. They will also share some of the common traits and abilities they have discovered in scientists who are also prolific scientific communicators.

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CBE Seminar Series: Julian Cooper
2025-12-02 16:00 - 17:00
Julian CooperDepartment of ChemistryUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

“Straining” for New Function in Macromolecular Systems

In this seminar, I will show how molecular strain can be an enabling tool to access new macroscopic capabilities in materials. First, I will discuss how applied strain can address end-of-life management challenges of real-world thermosetting materials. Polydicyclopentadiene (pDCPD) based thermosets made by frontal ring-opening metathesis polymerization (FROMP) can be reprocessed and recycled repeatedly by leveraging both the embedded catalyst used to make this material and compressive strain applied to the material. The subsequent generations of pDCPD display near-identical properties compared to the original material, demonstrating successful circularization of the material lifecycle.

Next, I will showcase some of the enabling capabilities that can be attained with what we’ve learned from reprocessing polyolefin thermosets and highlight some of the exciting directions the Cooper group is heading. In connecting molecular features to macroscopic behavior, we aim to tackle pressing materials challenges and identify new areas of collaboration between CBE and Chemistry here at UW-Madison.

Grad School Virtual Info Session
2025-12-03 09:00 - 10:00
Join us to learn more about graduate school with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UW-Madison! We will be hosting virtual sessions on the first Wednesday of every month from June through December from 9:00-10:00am CST. Please RSVP here.

Those who attend will learn more about:

Mechanical Engineering Department programs overview (including department research overview)

Research MS and PhD program information

Professional (course-only) based MS program information

Admissions Information

Faculty & Graduate Student Panel

Q&A

Much More!

Questions? Email us at dept@me.engr.wisc.edu

NEEP Seminar Series: Saya Lee, Penn State
2025-12-04 12:00 - 13:00
Thursday, December 412:00 – 1:00pm106 Engineering Research BuildingPlease contact office@neep.wisc.edu for assistance with remote participation.

Experimental Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics: Experimental techniques and applications in advanced reactorsNuclear Engineering requires an understanding of fundamental thermal-fluid phenomena and the application of those phenomena to complex nuclear systems. In conventional light water reactors and water-cooled small modular reactors, two-phase boiling heat transfer has been one of the main research targets for both efficiency and safety. In non-water-cooled reactors such as gas-cooled reactors, liquid-metal reactors, and molten-salt reactors, the importance of turbulent flow needs to be emphasized as their primary system operates in a single-phase condition. Interestingly, heat-pipe microreactors use liquid metal phase change. This seminar will cover experimental techniques that Dr. Saya Lee has been working on to contribute to nuclear thermal hydraulics and their applications from fundamental phenomena to various reactor designs.

Dr. Saya Lee is an Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University, with a research focus on nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics. He earned his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.S. in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Handong University in South Korea. He has extensive experience in diverse nuclear thermal-fluid applications to maintain the safety and operability of the current LWR fleet and to support the design and development of advanced reactors, including a SMR heat exchanger, a VHTR upper plenum, a SFR wire-wrapped fuel rod bundle, and a pebble bed HTGR. Also, he has expertise in the development and use of advanced measurement techniques. Recently, Dr. Lee has been actively working on heat-pipe-cooled microreactors.

ME 903 Graduate Seminar: Professor Leora Dresslhaus-Marais
2025-12-04 16:00 - 17:00 | 3M Auditorium, rm 1106 Mechanical Engineering Building, 1513 University Ave, Madison, 53711
The ME 903: Graduate Student Lecture Series features campus and visiting speakers who present on a variety of research topics in the field of mechanical engineering. Professor Leora Dresslhaus-Marais is a professor at Stanford University.

BME Design Fall Poster Presentations
2025-12-05 12:00 - 14:15 | Engineering Centers Building Atrium, 1550 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Join us for our annual fall design poster session. BME sophomores, juniors and seniors work in teams to design healthcare solutions for real-world clients. The public is welcome.

Mechanics Seminar: Professor Kenny Breuer
2025-12-05 12:05 - 12:55 | Engineering Hall, RM 1610, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, 53711
The Mechanics Seminar Series is a weekly seminar given by campus and visiting speakers on topics across the spectrum of mechanics research (solids, fluids, and dynamics). Professor Kenny Breuer is a professor at Brown University.

CBE Seminar Series: PPG Graduate Student Seminar
2025-12-09 16:00 - 17:00
Reception 5-6pm, Cheney Room (1413 Engineering Hall)

ISyE - Line Dancing!
2025-12-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Red Rock Saloon, 222 W Gorham St, Madison, 53703
Join fellow students for an evening of line dancing at the Red Rock Saloon. Anyone over the age of 18 is welcome to join. Hosted by IISE.

ECE Capstone Design Open House
2025-12-10 12:00 - 13:30 | Mechanical Engineering Building, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI, 53706-1539, United States
All are welcome to come view demonstrations of projects created by student teams in ECE capstone design courses! ECE alumni and course instructors will serve as judges as teams compete for Best Project awards. Past winning projects have included a Mario Kart-type simulator, a sign language recognition device, and an app for AI-automated time management and scheduling for students.

Courses participating in the ECE Capstone Design Open House:ECE 453 – Embedded Microprocessor System Design taught by Teaching Faculty Joe KracheyECE 454 – Mobile Computing Laboratory taught by Associate Professor Bhuvana KrishnaswamyECE 455 – Capstone Design in Electrical and Computer Engineering taught by Associate Professor Tsung-Wei (TW) HuangECE 455 – Capstone Design in Electrical and Computer Engineering taught by Assistant Teaching Professor Nathan Strachen

ECE Alumni Judges:

Rick Abegglen (BS’82, MS’84, JD’99) – Casimir Jones, S.C. – ShareholderBill Barbiaux (BS’82) – GE Healthcare – Principal Engineer, RetiredBill Berg (BS’71, MS’72) – Dairyland Power Cooperative – Chief Executive Officer, RetiredCole Burek (BS’18) – Extreme Engineering Solutions – Embedded EngineerOlivia D’Souza (BS’24) – University of Wisconsin–Madison – PhD StudentJake Eichinger (BS’17) – Exact Sciences – Senior Systems Software EngineerJohn Hester (BS’91) – Techtricity Corporation – President, RetiredJosh Kagerbauer (BS’03, MS’06) – Rockwell Automation – Electrical Hardware Engineering ManagerRobert Lux (BS’78) – Department of Administration for the State of Wisconsin, Capital Projects Principle – Management of Facilities DevelopmentCory Mueller (MS’18) – American Transmission Co. – Senior Control EngineerNader Nasr (BS’91) – Oshkosh Corp. – Senior VP of EngineeringPhil Nwafor (BS’03) – Google – Director of Healthcare & Life Sciences Terry Sartori (BS’80) – GE Healthcare, Accuray – Engineering Project Manager, RetiredAlex Sharp (BS’24) – Extreme Engineering Solutions – Hardware Debug EngineerKhailanii Slaton (BS’24) – University of Wisconsin–Madison – PhD studentBob Wolf (BS’84) – IBM – Sales Executive, Retired

ECE Donuts & Degrees
2025-12-11 09:30 - 10:30 | 1413 Engineering Hall – Cheney Room, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53711, United States
December ECE graduates! Please join us for a donut and coffee celebration in honor of your wonderful achievement. Stop in anytime between 9:30-10:30 for treats, fun, and a special graduation gift.

ISyE - Study Day
2025-12-11 11:00 - 15:30 | 311 Wendt Commons, Madison, 53706
311 Wendt Commons

Join the students of IISE for a study session. Come hang with members to chat and take your mind off of finals, or lock in! Food will be provided.

ISyE - Undergraduate 3 Minute Presentations
2025-12-12 09:30 - 11:30 | 3121 Mechanical Engineering, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, 53706
3121 Mechanical Engineering

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) is inviting undergraduate presenters to participate in a 3-Minute Presentation Competition. Eligible topics include:

Class assignments or projects

Research studies

Practical applications

Case studies

Any other work/thoughts related to human factors

This is an excellent opportunity for undergraduates to present their own work and see the work of others in the field of human factors, while also developing their communications skills. Prizes will be awarded to the top presenters! Registration is required.

Register – Undergraduate 3-Minute Presentations

BME Winter 2025 Graduation Celebration
2025-12-13 15:00 - 17:00 | Engineering Centers Building Atrium, 1550 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
The Biomedical Engineering Department is hosting a graduation celebration for fall 2025 graduates and their guests.

Graduating students will receive an email with information about how to RSVP and about picking up your graduation gift.

CEE Graduation Breakfast
2025-12-14 08:00 - 09:30 | Union South, 1308 W Dayton St, Madison, Wisconsin, 53715
The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department is hosting celebratory breakfast at Union South for fall 2025 graduates and their guests on Sunday, December 14. Breakfast will be served buffet-style from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. before commencement at the Kohl Center, which begins at 10:00 a.m. This event is free for graduating students and their guests, and registration is required by Wednesday, November 26.

Details on how to register will be shared with students via email in November. The menu includes scrambled eggs, bagels, roasted baby potatoes, fresh fruit, coffee, tea, and juice.

Please contact Amanda Thuss (athuss@wisc.edu) with any questions.

Chemical Engineering 2025 Winter Commencement Banquet
2025-12-14 12:00 - 15:00 | Union South – Varsity Hall, 1308 W Dayton St, Madison, Wisconsin, 53715
Congratulations to our graduating class of 2025. After years of hard work, the students and faculty are putting on the 2025 Winter Banquet for Chemical Engineering.

The banquet is in Varsity Hall at Union South on the second floor. The banquet is directly after the graduation ceremony at the Kohl Center. It involves lunch, a toast, and a gift for students. Information about RSVP and guests is available in the email invitation to students.

ISyE - Choice-based Operations At Scale: Complementarity and Dynamic Decisions
2026-01-12 12:00 - 13:00 | 1163 Mechanical Engineering, 1513 Engineering Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Assortment and inventory decisions lie at the core of supply chain and retail operations. In practice, these decisions face two fundamental challenges arising from complex customer choice behavior. First, customers often purchase complementary products across categories, which makes category-level decisions interdependent. Second, inventory is limited and customers arrive over time, so product availability changes dynamically as items stock out. Most work in choice-based operations has focused on single-category and static settings, while research addressing these two challenges remains relatively limited. Existing approaches often either oversimplify customer preferences in choice modeling or rely on algorithms that are not tractable in large-scale settings. In this talk, I will present two projects that address these challenges. The first proposes a Markovian framework to model cross-category complementarity, supporting scalable estimation and joint assortment optimization. The second introduces a unified algorithmic framework for dynamic assortment and inventory optimization under MNL choice, with provable guarantees in both personalized and non-personalized settings. Together, these works offer scalable tools for decision-making in complex, data-driven supply chain environments.

Bio: Shuo Sun is a PhD candidate in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on modeling and algorithm design for supply chain and revenue management using optimization and machine learning. Her work has received several recognitions, including the INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize and a finalist distinction in the INFORMS RMP Jeff McGill Best Student Paper Award. She has publications in leading conferences and papers published or under revision at leading operations and analytics journals, as well as industry experience at Amazon and JD.com on retail operations problems.

ISyE - Auto-Conditioned First-Order and Stochastic Optimization Methods
2026-01-15 12:00 - 13:00 | 1163 Mechanical Engineering, 1513 Engineering Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
First-order methods are widely used to tackle data science and machine learning problems with complex structures, such as nonconvexity, nonsmoothness, and stochasticity. However, in many real-world scenarios, the problem structure and parameters can be unknown or ambiguous, creating significant challenges for algorithm design and stepsize selection.

In this talk, I will present a novel class of first-order methods, termed auto-conditioned methods, that are universal for solving various classes of optimization problems without requiring prior knowledge of problem parameters or resorting to any line search or backtracking procedures. In the first part of the talk, we focus on convex optimization and propose a uniformly optimal method for smooth, weakly smooth, and nonsmooth problems. In the second part of the talk, we consider smooth but possibly nonconvex optimization, and propose a novel parameter-free projected gradient method with the best-known unified complexity for convex and nonconvex problems. We then generalize the method to the stochastic setting, achieving new universal complexity bounds that are nearly optimal for both convex and nonconvex problems. The advantages of the proposed methods are demonstrated by encouraging numerical results.

Bio: Tianjiao Li is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Operations Research Center. He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, where he was advised by Prof. George Lan and Prof. Ashwin Pananjady. His research interests lie in the theory and methodology of nonlinear optimization, stochastic optimization, and reinforcement learning, with a central focus on bridging rigorous theoretical development with practical relevance, especially in data science and artificial intelligence. His work has been recognized as an honorable mention in the INFORMS George Nicholson Student Paper Competition and as second place in the INFORMS Optimization Society Student Paper Award.

BME Bay Area Meetup
2026-01-15 17:00 - 19:00 | Steins Beer Garden & Restaurant, 895 Villa St, Mountain View, California, 94041, United States
We’re headed to the California Bay Area to kick off a new year of innovation. You and your guests are invited to join fellow Wisconsin BME alumni and friends for an alumni reception at Steins Beer Garden in Mountain View, CA.

RSVP

ECE Virtual Alumni Town Hall
2026-01-21 12:00 - 13:00
ECE alumni, we hope you will join us for this one-hour virtual event hosted by ECE Department Chair Susan Hagness. Our guest for this event will be College of Engineering Dean Devesh Ranjan. Hear Ranjan’s impressions of his first year as Dean, his vision for the college going forward, and other timely topics such as federal funding impacts. We welcome your questions for our panelists.

Alumni, please check your email for your invitation in January.

Susan Hagness

Devesh Ranjan

ISyE - GPU-Accelerated Linear Programming and Beyond
2026-01-21 12:00 - 13:00 | 1163 Mechanical Engineering, 1513 Engineering Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
The rapid progress in GPU computing has revolutionized many fields, yet its potential in mathematical programming, such as linear programming (LP), has only recently begun to be realized. This talk aims to provide an overview of recent advancements in GPU-based first-order methods for LP, with a particular focus on the design and development of cuPDLPx. The extensions to GPU-based optimization beyond LP, including convex quadratic programming and semidefinite programming, will also be discussed.

Bio: Jinwen Yang is a final-year Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, advised by Professor Haihao Lu. His research interests are in optimization, with a particular focus on optimization algorithms tailored to modern hardware (like GPUs) and intended for practical applications. He obtained B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Fudan University.

ME 903 Graduate Seminar: Professor Jeff Tithof
2026-01-22 16:00 - 17:00 | 3M Auditorium, rm 1106 Mechanical Engineering Building, 1513 University Ave, Madison, 53711
The ME 903: Graduate Student Lecture Series features campus and visiting speakers who present on a variety of research topics in the field of mechanical engineering. Professor Jeff Tithof is a professor at the University of Minnesota.

Title: Coupled Blood–CSF Flow Dynamics Driving Waste Clearance in the Brain

Abstract: The last decade has seen a tremendous increase in research probing the role of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulation through the brain in health and disease. This circulation, known as the “glymphatic” (glial-lymphatic) system, is a novel transport pathway first described in 2012 which plays an important role in removing protein waste from the brain. Amyloid-beta is one such protein waste that is known to accumulate over decades, contributing to the development of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. I will first give a brief history of this field, then discuss several important open questions, including what propels CSF circulation and why it decreases with aging. I will present recent numerical modeling from my research team that suggests CSF and blood flow work synergistically to amplify brain waste clearance. I will also show that by carefully calibrating our model against published in vivo measurements of amyloid-beta, we obtained critical waste production and clearance parameters not yet measured in experiments. In the last portion of the seminar, I will present preliminary results from in vivo mouse experiments demonstrating how neuromodulation (electrical stimulation of nerves) can be leveraged to enhance glymphatic transport in the brain, potentially leading to therapeutic approaches to prevent or slow progression of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Bio: Dr. Jeff Tithof is a Benjamin Mayhugh Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Georgia Tech in 2016 and his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from University of Tennessee in 2010. From 2016 to 2020, Jeff was a postdoc then an Assistant Research Professor at University of Rochester. His research focuses on biological fluid dynamics, often involving complementary utilization of in vivo experiments and numerical simulations. Jeff has coauthored 35 peer-reviewed publications, including 20 involving brain mass transport. Jeff received the University of Minnesota Mechanical Engineering “Nugent Family Faculty Teaching Award” in 2025 and a “Career Award at the Scientific Interface” from Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2019.
