CSI 701:
Foundations of Computational Sciences

Home

Academics

General Information

Instructor

Juan R. Cebral
Email: jcebral@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-4078

Prerequisites

Fluency with at least one of the following computer languages: FORTRAN, FORTRAN90, C, or C++ (CSI 603, 604 or equivalent)
Fluency with the Unix operating system (CSI 601,602 or equivalent).
Numerical Methods (CSI 700 or equivalent).
OR Permission of Instructor.

Description

The goal of Computational Sciences is to advance our knowledge of scientific disciplines (e.g. physics, astronomy, biology, medicine, etc.) through the use of computational methods and tools. Computational Sciences complement and support the traditional approaches to sciences represented by theoretical and experimental sciences. Themes of Computational Sciences include modeling and simulation, numerical methods, data analysis, scientific databases, scientific visualization and high performance computing.

This course is on scientific computation. It emphasizes the role of computation as a fundamental tool of discovery in the development of science, and will cover some of the methods, techniques, and tools used in this field. This course is NOT just a theoretical exploration of the issues in computational science nor an introduction to computational tools. Students are expected to have extensive experience with Unix and with programming before they begin this class.

Topics

Fundamentals of Computing - machine architecture, computer languages, machine representations of data, efficient algorithms, data structures, programming paradigms, recursion, iteration, divide and conquer methods
Simulation and Numerical Algorithms - simulation techniques: numerical solution to differential equations, numerical linear algebra, Monte Carlo techniques, quantitative vs qualitative simulations, connections to databases
Software Engineering for Scientists - complex code development, standards, specifications, validation, verification, optimization
High Performance Computing - Concurrent and Parallel Computing - optimization, architecture of parallel computers, simulation strategies, communications, heterogeneous systems, client-server systems
Applications of Computational Science - uses of computational science

Bibliography

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell
Scientific Computing - An Introductory Survey by Michael Heath
High Performance Computing by Kevin Dowd and Charles Severance
Numerical Recipes by W. Press, S. Teukolsky, W. Vetterling and B.P. Flannery
Algorithms by R. Sedgewick
Numerical computation of internal and external flows. Vol 1. by C. Hirsch
Computer simulations using particles. by R. Hockney and J. Eastwood
Iterative methods for sparse linear systems by Y. Saad

Honor Code

As in any class, you are allowed to study with other students. However, tests and homework assignments (unless otherwise specified) must be completed on your own. SPECIFICALLY - YOU MAY NOT COPY ANY TEXT OR MATERIAL AND REPRESENT IT AS YOUR OWN WORK. For both papers and for code, you may reference or link to other peoples work (if it is consistent with the assignment), but you MUST cite the source it came from. Failure to follow these guidelines will be considered a violation of GMU's academic honor code and will be treated as such.

Class Notes

Assignments

Download the description, data, etc. for the assignments:

To submit your assignemnts, go to UPLOAD. Make sure you upload a single tar/gziped file for each assignment, and name four file: name_assignN.tar.gz

For visualization of the results you can use any software, including my own visualizer (zfem). This code can be run on the COS Lab (Room 249): /Users/jcebral/bin/zfem (it will only run on these workstations). Documentation for zfem is available HERE.

Calendar

The calendar for Spring 2008 is available HERE.

Office Hours

Before the class on Thursdays 6pm - 7pm.

Quick Links
Information
Class Notes
Assignments
Computing
Calendar

last update: 2/1/2008

CSI 701:Foundations of Computational Sciences